Summer Reading for Parents
Be a Model Reader!
Connect With Your Kids Through Reading
We are delighted to provide parents with their very own Summer Reading List. These are titles chosen for their quality, social value, and enjoyability factor. We also purposely chose books that are fairly short yet pack a punch.
We encourage you to be a reading model this summer. Read something from your child's Summer Reading List or choose one of the books below. Let your child see you making time for and enjoying reading. Make a connection through reading!
For Everyone
For Every One is just that: for every one. For every one person. For every one dream. But especially for every one kid. The kids who dream of being better than they are. Kids who dream of doing more than they almost dare to dream. Originally performed at the Kennedy Center for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and later as a tribute to Walter Dean Myers.
The 57 Bus
The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives is the true story story of an African American public school teen boy named Richard who sets fire to a sleeping, gender-nonconforming white private school teen named Sasha. A compelling exploration of gender identity, adolescent crime, and penal racism.
Thousand Star Hotel
Confronts the silence around racism, police brutality, and the invisibility of the Asian American urban poor. “At once tender and taboo-busting, pithy and sprawling, effulgent and expository, Thousand Star Hotel is a compendium of ‘warring ideals’ spoken through the voices and seen through the eyes of a refugee child turned poet adult." —Kenyon Review
Children of Blood and Bone
The Children of Blood and Bone is influenced by author Tomi Adeyemi’s West African heritage. High stakes, a captivating fantasy landscape, and a brave heroine worth rooting for make Children of Blood and Bone a refreshing new take on fantasy.
We Should All Be Feminists
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness.
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian meets Jane the Virgin in this poignant but often laugh-out-loud funny contemporary YA about losing a sister and finding yourself amid the pressures, expectations, and stereotypes of growing up in a Mexican-American home.
Long Way Down
Kamala Khan is an ordinary girl from Jersey City - until she is suddenly empowered with extraordinary gifts. But who truly is the all-new Ms. Marvel? Teenager? Muslim? Inhuman? Find out as she takes the Marvel Universe by storm!
Ghost Boys
Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that's been unleashed on his family and community and meets the ghost of Emmett Till.
Far From the Tree
This moving novel addresses such important topics as adoption, teen pregnancy, and foster care. “Family issues are neither airbrushed nor oversimplified. From the first page to the last, this compassionate, funny, moving, compulsively readable novel about what makes a family gets it right.” —Kirkus Reviews