growing up

Caddie Woodlawn

Caddie Woodlawn is a real adventurer. She’d rather hunt than sew and plow than bake and tries to beat her brother’s dares every chance she gets. Caddie is friends with Indians, who scare most of the neighbors — neighbors who, like her mother and sisters, don’t understand her at all.

Caddie is brave, and her story is special because it’s based on the life and memories of Carol Ryrie Brink’s grandmother, the real Caddie Woodlawn. Her spirit and sense of fun have made this book a classic that readers have taken to their hearts for more than seventy years.

The House In The Night

A spare, patterned text and glowing pictures explore the origins of light that make a house a home in this bedtime book for young children. Naming nighttime things that are both comforting and intriguing to preschoolers—a key, a bed, the moon—this timeless book illuminates a reassuring order to the universe.

How To Heal A Broken Wing

In a spare urban fable, Bob Graham brings us one small boy, one loving family, and one miraculous story of hope and healing.”No one saw the bird fall.”In a city full of hurried people, only young Will notices the bird lying hurt on the ground. With the help of his sympathetic mother, he gently wraps the injured bird and takes it home. In classic Bob Graham style, the beauty is in the details: the careful ministrations with an eyedropper, the bedroom filled with animal memorabilia, the saving of the single feather as a good-luck charm for the bird’s return to the sky. Wistful and uplifting, here is a tale of possibility – and of the souls who never doubt its power.

This book has been included in WOW’s Kids Taking Action Booklist. For our current list, visit our Boolist page under Resources in the green navigation bar.

Holes

As further evidence of his family’s bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

La Fiesta De Las Tortillas / The Fiesta Of The Tortillas (Spanish Edition)

The author remembers the day in which the Spirit of the Corn visited the restaurant that his family owned in El Salvador. The narration is full of suspense and impregnated with the delicious scents that surrounded the kitchen and that remain intact in the memory and the heart of the author from his childhood.

Cesar: Si, Se Puede! / Yes, We Can!

cesar

An award-winning title now available in Spanish

Born in 1927 in Yuma, Arizona, César Chavez lived the hard-scrabble life of a migrant worker during the Depression. Although his mother wanted him to get an education, César left school after eighth grade to work. He grew to be a charismatic leader and founded the National Farm Workers Association, an organization that fought for basic rights for farm workers. In powerful poems and dramatic stylized illustrations, Carmen T. Bernier-Grand and David Díaz pay tribute to Chavez’s legacy helping migrant workers improve their lives by doing things by themselves for themselves.

Family/Familia

Young Daniel doesn’t share his dad’s excitement over going to the family reunion. What’s the big deal? It’s just going to be a bunch of old people he doesn’t know, sitting around and telling stories about other old people he doesn’t know. Once there, though, Daniel is in for several pleasant surprises.

The Rowdy, Rowdy Ranch / Alla En El Rancho Grande

On El Rancho Grande, the grandchildren are not so interested in how Grandpa bought the ranch, but in what can be done on the ranch. The children play hide and seek in cornfields, under “the canopy of green leaves, golden threads and giant ears of corn.” They feed the family horses, ride the rambunctious pigs, and take frolicking dips in the duck pond. But through all of the outdoor escapades, their family stories are circling in the air, like the “sunflower wind” blooming around them. While drinking ice-cold lemonade in the sunshine, they hear about how Grandpa’s song of sorrow won him El Rancho. They hear about chickens that have abandoned their coops to live in Abuela’s chicken tree, and they even discover a story about a boy who cried chocolate tears. In those days of running and jumping, the narrator, Tito, did not realize that he was hearing the stories that would wrap him up “like an enchanted sarape to keep me warm for the rest of [his] life.”

Lupe Vargas And Her Super Best Friend / Lupe Vargas Y Su Super Mejor Amiga

Lupe and Maritza are super best friends. When they’re together, they can be anything they want—pirates, scientists, or heroes. When they’re apart, well, life just isn’t as fun. This is the story of two girls who make each day a new adventure. And when they get into a spat—which is inevitable even among the most super, best of friends—they have to find a way to make it right. And luckily, with a little bit of this and a little bit of that, they do.