Falling in Love With….

This summer has been fabulous. Plenty of time for relaxing, reading, learning and having fun. I also had time to fall in love with… books written for older kids! You see, I've been working exclusively with young children for many years so I rarely read books for kids older than eight years old. This changed a bit last year when I was invited to join a book club exclusively for adults who read children's books (thank you Amy Short!). For our monthly meetings, we would typically read one YA (young adult) and a couple of picture books, both fiction and non-fiction. Discussions were always lively and interesting - this was a group of real readers! I found that I really enjoyed the YA selections. So this summer, spurred on by recommendations from my twitter PLN, I read many books for older kids and, yes, I fell in love with this genre! The books I read were really well written, had well developed characters and stories that touched my heart. BTW, yes, I have read a bunch of adult books as well, but that's not what this post is about! Following are a few of my favorite summer reads (for kids older than my students) in no particular order:

age 10 and up

age 8 and up

A 2014 Newbery Honor Book
age 8 and up

age 9 and up

age 12 and up

The 2014 Newbery Medal Winner
age 8 and up

Grade 9 and up

2013 Newbery Medal Winner
I read this one last summer but was so memorable,
I decided to include it anyway.
age 8 and up

It will be exciting to get back to school in a few weeks and open the boxes of new books that were ordered last June. One of the greatest joys of being a school librarian is sharing the best in children's literature.  Once again my reading life has been expanded and made richer. I look forward to sharing the wonders and magic of books with Memorial students and staff.

*many of the age ratings are from: Common Sense Media