AARP and Publishers Weekly team up once again, scouring the latest titles and helping you find just the right book for your grandchild. From a cookbook for toddlers to a book about the real John Henry, there's something here for everyone.
For Preschoolers
Colors Everywhere: A Guess How Much I Love You Storybook
When I'm Big: A Guess How Much I love You Storybook
by Sam McBratney, illus. by Anita Jeram
Candlewick Press
$7.99 each
ISBN 13: 978-0-7636-3546-6; 978-0-7636-3545-9
Ages 2 to 4
Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare, the cotton-tailed stars of the justly popular picture book Guess How Much I Love You, introduce the concepts of size and color in these two pitch-perfect board books. Clear prose encourages discussion and invites readers to explore the illustrations’ sunny springtime settings.
Smash! Crash!
by Jon Scieszka, illus. by David Shannon, Loren Long and David Gordon
Simon & Schuster
$16.99
ISBN 13: 978-1-4169-4133-0
Ages 3 to 7
If you know an energetic preschooler who loves trucks, we are willing to bet he will love this oversize book, in which two best friends who happen to be trucks thrive on gear-grinding noise and rowdy antics. Scieszka (rhymes with Fresca) is also the nation’s first Young People’s Literature Ambassador, so the voluble junkyard settings will pass librarian inspection, and the art offers pure, Pixar-like fun.
The Toddler Cookbook
by Annabel Karmel
DK Publishers
$10.99
ISBN 13: 978-0-7566-3505-3
Ages 3 and up
Written by a prominent British children’s nutritionist and cooking expert, some of these recipes for healthy entrees and snacks may be familiar (pita pizzas, ice pops) but the abundant photographs and illustrated directions suggest plenty of ways to let small children join you as you cook.
Bloom! A Little Book About Finding Love
by Maria Van Lieshout
Feiwel and Friends
$12.95
ISBN 13: 978-0-312-36913-2
All ages
Bloom, a pig entirely capable of batting her eyes, falls in love with a butterfly and suffers a broken heart, only to have it mended by a faithful swine swain. With its fresh, of-the-moment design, this pink-and-white confection is a valentine that can be shared year-round.
Zen Ties
by Jon J. Muth
Scholastic
$17.99
ISBN 13: 978-0-439-63425-0
All ages
Stillwater, a giant panda who is also a Zen master, returns from the Caldecott Honor book Zen Shorts to introduce his young friends to the elderly neighbor whose outbursts have frightened them. Trust Muth to imbue the story with slow-moving grace—and impress your grandchild by explaining that the title is a pun: zentai is Japanese for “the whole,” as in “all of us together.”
For the Elementary Set
We Are the Ship
by Kadir Nelson
Hyperion/Jump at the Sun
$18.99
ISBN 13: 978-0-7868-0832-8
Ages 8 and up
No baseball fan should be without this sumptuous volume, a history of the Negro Leagues delivered in folksy vernacular by a fictional player. While this handsome, square book could sit proudly on a coffee table by virtue of Nelson’s muscular paintings, it soars as a tribute to individual athletes.
Airman
by Eoin Colfer
Hyperion
$17.99
ISBN 13: 978-1-4231-0750-7
Ages 10 and up
Eoin Colfer won a big following with his bestselling Artemis Fowl novel. Now he outdoes himself with polished, sophisticated storytelling that pays homage to H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. The plot invokes a late-19th-century preoccupation with the fledgling science of flight, machinations within a kingdom in the Saltee Islands, and a boy whose “superpowers” consist of his own smarts.
Waiting for Normal
by Leslie Connor
HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen
$16.99
ISBN 13: 978-0-06-089088-9
Ages 10 and up
On the surface, this book will sound depressing: after her mother and stepfather divorce, sixth-grader Addie finds herself left alone for days in the tiny trailer she and her mother now call home. But Addie is uncommonly resilient and resourceful; characters as persuasively optimistic as this girl are rare, and readers will gravitate to her.
Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper
by Michael Reisman
Dutton$
15.99
ISBN 13: 978-0-525-47922-3
Ages 9 and up
A secret book with powers that could destroy the universe, sought after by nefarious beings; secret societies; an ironic British narrator; and an Everyboy hero with two best friends—it could be old hat, except that Reisman adds a science angle, making the secret book a “teacher’s edition of physics” and shaping the science concepts not just accessibly but excitingly.
Pandora Gets Jealous
by Carolyn Hennesy
Bloomsbury $14.95
ISBN 13: 978-1-59990-196-1
Ages 9 to 12
Harry Potter meets Edith Hamilton as Prometheus’s daughter, Pandora, sneaks a certain secret box out of hiding so she doesn’t have to bring her father’s boring old eagle-eaten liver to a student show-and-tell competition—not that she plans to open it or anything. Accurate where it counts, this loosely interpreted myth rarely misses a comic beat.
For Teens
Ain’t Nothing But a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry
by Scott Reynolds Nelson with Marc Aronson
National Geographic
$18.95
ISBN 13: 978-1-4263-0000-4
Ages 10 to 14
Nelson models the study of history as an active and passionate pursuit as he shows readers how he pieced together a panoply of facts and anecdotes to find the real-life subject of the folk song “John Henry.”
Saving Juliet
by Suzanne Selfors
Walker
$16.95
ISBN 13: 978-0-8027-9740-7
Ages 12 and up
Finding herself magically transported into Shakespeare’s play, a savvy 17-year-old decides to give Romeo and Juliet a happy ending. This clever novel pays extra dividends to theater buffs, but readers shy of Shakespeare can enjoy it, too.
The London Eye Mystery
by Siobhan Dowd
Random House/ David Fickling Books
$15.99
ISBN 13: 978-0-375-84976-3
Ages 12 and up
A 12-year-old London boy with a condition like Asperger’s syndrome narrates this page-turner, which describes how he uses the intense observational skills associated with his unnamed disorder to solve the especially tricky mystery of his cousin’s disappearance.
Dingo
by Charles de Lint
Penguin/ Firebird
$11.99
ISBN 13: 978-0-14-240816-2
Ages 12 and up
In the hands of De Lint, fantasy becomes a way of exploring what’s most human about us—even when his subjects include shape-changers and borrowings from Australian folklore.
Ringside 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial
by Jen Bryant
Knopf
$15.99
ISBN 13: 978-0-37584047-0
Ages 12 and up
Conjuring fictionalized inhabitants of crumbling Dayton, Tennessee, home of the infamous Scopes “monkey trial,” Bryant lets her characters speak directly, in well-honed verse that reflects a wide range of perspectives. The colorful facts she retrieves, the personal story lines, and the deft rhythms of her writing invite readers to consider the issues for themselves.
