6 Summer Reads Your Kids Will Love
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School will soon be out, but that doesn’t mean your kids should stop reading. Keep their brains humming all summer long (and get a jumpstart on the next school year!) with any one of these six books they’ll surely love, from a tale of a reckless young sorcerer, to one of a phantom tollbooth that leads to a world of adventure.
A Wizard of Earthsea By Ursula K. Le Guin Ged is a young sorcerer who exercises his power recklessly—to devastating effect. First published in 1968, this fantasy follows his compelling quest in a beautifully imagined world. It’s also a luminous meditation on identity and mortality.
Brown Girl Dreaming By Jacqueline Woodson This memoir about growing up as a black girl in the 1960s and ’70s in South Carolina and New York City is pure poetry—literally: It’s written in free verse. No mystery why it won a Newbery Medal and the National Book Award.
My Father’s Dragon By Ruth Stiles Gannett Armed with only a backpack holding well-chosen items (gum, a compass, hair ribbons—all of which are utilized), Elmer Elevator, 9, takes off to save a baby dragon. This book (the first of a trilogy) might be more than 60 years old, but it hasn’t lost its fire.
The Phantom Tollbooth By Norton Juster Milo drives his electric car through a toy tollbooth and enters a world of words and numbers, adventure and friends. This classic about learning steers clear of preaching. Instead, readers get subtle fun and great Jules Feiffer illustrations.
Every Day By David Levithan Another day, another physical incarnation for A, who has adapted to waking up each morning in a different body—male, female, scrawny, obese—until he falls in love.
The Lightning Thief By Rick Riordan What’s more fun than embarking on supersized adventures with wisecracking kids who happen to be demigods? This and the rest of the Percy Jackson series spark a deeper interest in Greek myths, on which they’re based, but are page-turners, too.
By the editors of All You
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