A book makes a great companion for any beach trips, travel, family visits and nature-related adventures that the summer may hold.
Tots โ age 7
Mermaidsโ Song to the Sea
By Dianna Hutts Aston
Illustrated by Renee Kurilla
Hippo Park/Astra, 2024, $18
At the end of the day, three mermaids sing a soothing lullaby to sea creatures resting in their watery world. Through rhyming verse and bright illustrations, youngsters learn about manatees, sea horses, clownfish, jellyfish, whales and other denizens of the deep and see them in their natural habitat. This delightful book celebrates marine life in language sure to resonate with little ones: โBless clams in their beds, and lobsters in pods. Bless sharks in their shivers, and squid in their squads.โ
The Soil in Jackieโs Garden
By Peggy Thomas
Illustrated by Neely Daggett
Feeding Minds Press, 2023, $18.99
Gardens now are brimming, whether with fast-growing radishes or the flowers that will develop into pumpkins come fall. Kids are often amazed by this process and curious as to how it all happens. This rhythmical, cumulative story invites youngsters into a dynamic underground world: โThis is the water/that wakes the seeds/that wait with the worms โ squirrrm!/that stir the soil in Jackieโs garden.โ Short sidebars relay additional info about leaves, roots, pollinators and so on, and a lively diagram at the end explains the soil cycle in age-appropriate language. Why not add to the joy and learning of this book by planting some seeds with your child, whether in a small container on a windowsill or in a patch of cleared earth?
Pedal, Balance, Steer
By Vivian Kirkfield
Illustrated by Alison Jay
Calkins Creek/Astra, 2024, $18.99
In June 1894, an intrepid immigrant accepts a lucrative wager and sets off from Boston to become the first woman to cycle round the world. Young readers can follow Annie Cohen Kopchovsky (known as Annie Londonderry) as she bikes through the United States, including a grueling 165 miles of desert, and boards steamships, trains and freighters to then pedal through cities in France, Egypt, Japan and many other countries. Along the way, she trades her skirts for bloomers and her heavy womanโs bicycle for a lighter manโs racer. She survives injuries, fends off thieves and deals with the French officials who confiscate her bicycle. She completes the world circuit within the designated 15 months, collects the money and moves with her husband and three children to New York City, where she gets a job as a journalist and begins to publish the tales of her travels. As this stirring work of nonfiction points out, Annie was undertaking her trip at a crucial time. American women were engaged in a decades-long battle for the vote โ they achieved that right in 1920 โ and Annie on her bicycle became a symbol of resilience, determination and freedom.
Preteens
Ferris
By Kate DiCamillo
Candlewick, 2024, $18.99
Summer proves a time of surprise and change for 10-year-old Ferris Wilkey and her family. A ghost visits, her 6-year-old sister decides to become an outlaw, her grandmother makes a strange request and her music-loving best friend constantly plays the haunting Mysterious Barricades on the piano. Once again, two-time Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo brings her trademark blend of humor and heart to this touching novel about the transformative beauty of the quotidian and the uplifting power of love.
Three Summers
By Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, with Laura Sullivan
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2024, $18.99
The author chronicles three summers in the 1980s in a small town in Bosnia in this tender, powerful memoir of friendship and family love. Eleven-year-old Amra is grief-stricken when her older brother dies but begins to brighten when her adventurous older cousin ลฝana comes for a summer visit. ลฝanaโs zeal and assertiveness help boost Amraโs confidence, as she navigates the ups and downs of adolescence, including bullies, crushes and a deepening of her own values. Around them, though, ethnic tensions are increasing, and as Muslims, Amra and her family are very aware of the growing divide between Bosniaks and Serbs. Though the memoir ends before the genocide in the early 1990s, the author includes a short, compelling โAfterโ that shares information on her familyโs struggle to survive during that atrocity and the current whereabouts of those mentioned in the book.
Teens
Force of Nature
By Ann E. Burg
Scholastic, 2024, $19.99
Ann E. Burg adds another eloquent novel in verse to her acclaimed oeuvre. This time she takes readers into the mind and world of Rachel Carson, a scientist and the author of the groundbreaking exposรฉ Silent Spring. Published in 1962, Carsonโs book brought worldwide attention to the harm caused to the natural world and humans by use of agricultural pesticides and other chemicals. Burgโs poems convey not just Carsonโs observant eye but her recognition of the interconnectedness of all forms of life, wonder at even the tiniest of creatures and determination to study science and share her findings despite societal opposition to such pursuits by a woman.
Sheine Lende
By Darcie Little Badger
Levine Querido, 2024, $19.99
Fans of Darcie Little Badgerโs Locus Award-winning Elatsoe will eagerly embrace this prequel, which focuses on Ellieโs grandmother, Shane, when she was young. A Lipan girl in the 1970s, Shane helps her mother and their ghost dogs to track down missing humans. When her mother disappears, Shane sets off to find her, even daring to venture Below, where the dead reside. Drawing from her own Lipan Apache heritage, the author crafts complex characters and suspenseful scenes to create an immersive, page-turning read.
