New Picture Books for the Week

The Red Hen

By: Rebecca Emberley and Ed Emberley

Red Hen finds a recipe for a Simply Splendid Cake and asks her friends the cat, the rat, and the frog to help with the preparations. But it seems as though her friends want no part in the cake until it's ready to eat. Will they decide to pitch in, or let Red Hen do all of the hard work?

Let's Count Goats!

By: Mem Fox

The reader is invited to count goats of many shapes, sizes, hobbies, and professions.

A Bedtime for Bear

By: Bonny Becker

A small but effervescent overnight guest tries the patience of a curmudgeonly bear who needs absolute quiet to fall asleep.

Interrupting Chicken

By: David Ezra Stein

Little Red Chicken wants Papa to read her a bedtime story, but interrupts him almost as soon as he begins each tale.

Calvin Can't Fly

By: Jennifer Berne

A young starling chooses to read books when his cousins are learning to fly, and the knowledge he acquires comes in handy when a hurricane threatens the flock's migration.

Dinosaur VS the Potty

By: Bob Shea

Dinosaur doesn't need to use the potty. Even when making lemonade, running through the sprinkler, splashing in puddles, playing in the water... But wait, is that a victory dance or something else?

Emily's New Friend

By: Cindy Post Senning

Emily and a new neighbor become friends by treating one another with generosity, kindness, and good manners. Includes a note for parents on the importance of teaching principles of etiquette at home.

My Mommy Hung the Moon

By: Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell
A hard-working mother's extraordinary accomplishments are listed by her devoted child.

Where are you Bear?

By: Frieda Wishinsky

Sophie is excited to visit her Grandma in Vancouver. But when it comes time to leave home in Newfoundland, she cant find her best friend Bear. Bear watches her departure sadly from the window and vows to find her again one day. For the remainder of the book, Sophies travels, depicted on the left-hand page, are parallelled by Bears own on the right-hand page.

Realistic Fiction for Teens

Are you tired of fantasy, sci-fi and all those paranormal romances? Here are a few book suggestions of stories that take place in the normal world.

Mockingbird (mok'ing-bûrd)

By: Kathryn Erskine

Ten-year-old Caitlin, who has Asperger's Syndrome, struggles to understand emotions, show empathy, and make friends at school, while at home she seeks closure by working on a project with her father.

Speak

By: Laurie Halse Anderson

A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.

Godless

By: Pete Hautman

When sixteen-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its own.

Dairy Queen

By: Catherine Murdock

After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her.

If I Stay

By: Gayle Foreman

While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weighs whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.

Along for the Ride

By: Sarah Dessen

When Auden impulsively goes to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents' divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and having new experiences such as learning to ride a bike and dating.

13 Reasons Why

By: Jay Asher

When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.

Confessions of a Serial Kisser

By: Wendelin Van Draanen

After reading her mother's secret collection of romance novels during her parent's difficult separation, seventeen-year-old Evangeline Logan begins a quest for the perfect kiss.

The Absolute True Diary of a Part time Indian

By: Sherman Alexie

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Perfect Chemistry

By: Simone Elkeles

When wealthy, seemingly perfect Brittany and Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, develop a relationship after Alex discovers that Brittany is not exactly who she seems to be, they must face the disapproval of their schoolmates--and others.

Hate List

By: Jennifer Brown

Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain