Great Books for Your Child

Sara Tackett
Jackson District Library

Looking for great books to read to your child?  The American Library Association announced their award winners of the best of last year’s books.  www.ala.org/ala/awardsgrants.


The Caldecott Award is given each year since 1938 for its illustration. This year’s winner is “A Sick Day for Amos McGee” written by Philip C.  Stead and illustrated by Erin Stead.  Amos McGee, a friendly zookeeper, always made time to visit his good friends: the elephant, the tortoise, the penguin, the rhinoceros, and the owl.   But one day--'Ah-choo!'--he woke with the sniffles and the sneezes. Though he didn't make it into the zoo that day, he did receive some unexpected guests.

The Robert F. Sibert Award honors  the most distiquished informational book. This years winner introduces us to the world’s strangest parrot in the “Kakapo Rescue” by Sy Montgomery and photographs by Nic Bishop. On remote Codfish Island, off the southern coast of New Zealand, live the last 91 kakapo parrots on earth.  Originally this bird numbered in the millions before humans brought predators to the islands. Now on the isolated island refuge, a team of scientists are trying to restore the kakapo population.

Looking for a great beginning reader?  Check out Theodore Seuss Geisel award winner “Bink and Gollie” by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee and illustrated by Tony Fucile.  Two roller-skating best friends--one tiny, one tall--share three comical adventures involving outrageously bright socks, an impromptu trek to the Andes, and a most unlikely marvelous companion.

The Coretta Scott King Award for new talent this year highlights “Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace”  by Jen Cullerton Johnson.  A biography of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmentalist Wangari Maathai, a female scientist who made a stand in the face of opposition to women's rights and her own Greenbelt Movement, an effort to restore Kenya's ecosystem by planting millions of trees.

These books and more can be found at the Jackson District Library (www.myjdl.com)

Sara Tackett, Youth Service Coordinator at the Jackson District Library and mother of four readers.  Sara is also a member of Jackson’s Great Start Collaborative.