Best Books 2006!!!!

We have balloted and the votes are in. In order to see the books selected for our list click on the label "best" below. You can also use the Library Thing link in the upper left hand corner of this page. At Library Thing, you can look at book covers and get ordering information, as well as printing out a copy of the list.

Wintersmith by Terry Prachett

Tiffany Aching, a 13 year old apprentice witch, gets a little excited at the season changing ceremonies and dances with the Wintersmith, the god of winter. For shame! The Wintersmith falls immediatly in love with her which causes much seasonal confusion for Tiffany's beloved homeland. This fantasy/fairy tale/comedy weaves together all these elements with style and hilarity. Characters span generations (one is even 113 years old) and sizes as Tiffany gets assistance from her pals, the wee-free-men, tiny blue Scotish warriors that keep her under careful watch.

There are elements of the story that will appeal to both boys and girls. Tiffany handles multiple crises with grace and thoughfulness. She's a good role model for adolescent girls, aside from the fact that she is, well, a witch in training.

This is part of a series but stands alone just fine. I have not read any of the previous stories and I had ball with this one.

Here's Looking at Me : How Artists See Themselves by Bob Raczka

This is an unusual way of looking at paintings. The self-portraits of 14 artists are pictured with accompanying commentary on the artist and the painting. Not all of the artists are widely known, although famous ones are represented. Fascinating facts will appeal to readers who may be inspired to look further at the artists' other works. Deceptively simple, this book asks interesting questions and helps us look at pictures in new ways. Among the artists represented are Van Gogh, Chagall, Velazquez, and Norman Rockwell. This can be used in art classes in grades 5-8.

The Homework Machine, by Dan Gutman

The book jacket shows a police file with photos of the four protagonists, a group of students who never would have chosen to be friends but who find themselves seated at the same table in Miss Rasmussen's fifth grade class. Readers are hooked from the beginning by the involvement of the police as the story unravels from interviews with the students, their parents, and teacher. One student, Brenton has found a way to harness the Internet to do his homework and soon all four gather daily at his house to use the homework machine despite their individual differences and the tensions among the four. Fun and fast to read, this one should hold lots of kid appeal.

Grades 4-6

The Man Who Named Clouds, by Julie Hannah and Joan Holub

As a boy, Luke Howard began keeping a weather journal. At the time, the 1700s very little was known about weather and how clouds formed. Fascinated by weather, Luke added paintings of the clouds to his weather records and soon developed a system for classifying and naming the types of clouds. His classification system was influenced by Linnaeus' scientific classification of plants and animals. A modern day student's weather journal including miscellaneous weather facts is interspersed throughout this interesting history of meterology and introduction to types of clouds. A good accompaniment to the fifth grade weather unit.

Grades 3-5

Not a Box, by Antoinette Portis

As any young child knows, a box is not a box but a racecar, a mountain, or a robot. A simple, repetitive text is paired with simple line drawings of a rabbit pretending that a box is anything but a cardboard box. This book has a classic, timeless feel and the question and answer exchange between the rabbit and the narrator will engage young listeners. This might be a fun writing model for older primary students.

PreK - K

Black? White! Day? Night! : A Book of Opposites by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

This is an ingenious treatment of opposites for pre-K through maybe first grade. Using flaps with holes cut in them to demonstrate opposites, the author has created a clever and original book. A black bat turns out to be the smiling mouth of a white ghost when the flap is lifted.Narrow looks like a thin yellow line on orange until you lift the flap and see wide, which is a long swath of yellow. This is a book that has to be seen and experienced to be appreciated. The design will be a problem in a library where it will get a lot of circulation, but it deserves consideration as a best book anyway. The drawings are simple and the colors bright, just the right combination for young children.

A Million Dots by Andrew Clements

Did you know it would take 11.5 days to count a million dots? Clements' book has a million dots and gives students a concept of just how many a million is. Each page marks numerical milestones on the way to a million. The 600th dot is circled indicating the number of times a mosquito's wings beats 600 per minute. The adult sperm whale weighs 87,600 pounds and there are 615,000 different words in the Oxford Dictionary are among the facts in the text. Don't go cross-eyed counting the dots!


Illustrated by Mike Reed

Building with Dad, by Carol Nevius

Illus. by Bill Thomson.

A young boy joins his dad at a construction site. The book opens from top to bottom providing interesting use of perspective and a sense of being dwarfed by the large equipment. The construction site is for a new school and will offer extra interest at newly opened schools.

Grades K-2

What Do Wheels Do All Day, by April Jones Prince

Illus. by Giles Laroche

Wheels move us in many ways: skateboards, motorcycles, and ferris wheels. A simple text employs vivid verbs to introduce a variety of wheels shown in attractive paper collage illustrations. Useful for primary units on motion as well as language arts lessons about action words.

Grades K-2

The Last Dragon, by Silvana Di Mari

Yorsh is a young elf who encounters two humans whose differences lead to several humorous situations. Encountering an old prophecy that the last elf and last dragon will create a new beginning for a land engulfed in darkness, Yorsh journeys to find the dragon. His fate is also tied to the fate of a young orphan girl whose parentage the reader will predict. This was a very satisfying fantasy with humor, danger, and characters the reader quickly cares about.

Drita, My Homegirl, by Jenny Lombard

Drita, a refugee from Kosovo and Maxie, an African American girl in her New York City classroom are an unlikely pair. Drita barely speaks English and struggles to make friends at her new school while outgoing Maxie is in frequent trouble for clowning around in class. Their stories are told in alternating chapters as the two girls get to know each other and their families. This is an outstanding story about friendship and overcoming differences.

Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything

In this sequel to Ruby Lu, Brave and True, feisty, Asian-American Ruby Lu jumps from one hilarious episode to another with her cousin, Flying Duck who has just emigrated from China to live with her. Children will relate to her thoughts and feelings about notes (to parents) pinned to her shirt; and her absolutely hilarious reaction to the Basic Lifesaving video she manages to check out from the library (because her dad doesn’t check her selections like her mom does).

Included at the end is, “Ruby’s Amazing Glossary and Guide to Important Words.” Another fun feature is the flip book of Chinese (?) sign language on the bottom of each page.

Interest level: Grades 1-3

Below by Nina Crews

Jack drops his favorite toy, Guy, through a hole in the staircase and worries about the dangers Guy might be facing down "below". Busy parents are unable to help immediatly so Jack must use his own ingenuity to retreive Guy all by himself. By using his toy crane, he joyfully recovers Guy and lots of other lost toys.
Crews' uses a variety of illustration techniques, dreamy double exposure images and hand drawings, to creatively show Jack's vivid imagination.

Bessie Smith and the Night Riders by Sue Stauffacher

Based on a real incident that happened near Concord, N.C., this story about Bessie Smith will fit well into the 8th grade social studies curriculum as a picture book for older readers. In 1927 Bessie Smith was touring the country by rail. She was performing in a tent outside of Concord when night riders from the Klan showed up and tried to scare her off. She "cussed" them and refused to leave, so they gave up and left her alone. The author embelishes the facts a bit, using a young girl who admires Bessie's singing as the main character and adding some dramatic fictional events around the edges of the true story. Bright, swirling, colorful illustrations will also attract readers.

Gone Wild : An Endangered Animal Alphabet by David McLimans

The best word to describe this book is elegant. The author/illustrator has created letters that incorporate some part of each endangered animal that he has chosen to highlight. The only colors employed are black, white, and red. Upper and lower case letters are shown in addition to the animal letter and an outline picture of the animal. A text box on each page gives the animal's class, habitat, range, threats, and degree of endangerment. In the back, there is additional interesting information for each animal. This treatment is spare but effective. The book can be used with children of many ages to teach about endangered animals. When I was at Mendenhall, we used to do a unit on alphabet books which culminated in the students' creating their own book around an assigned theme. There are many possibilites for curriculum connection here.

Aliens are Coming: the True Account of the 1938 War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast, by Meghan McCarthy

The true story of the broadcast that frightened a nation is introduced with a reminder that radio reigned before television. The illustrations alternate black and white to show people in the 1930s and their reactions while imaginative visions of aliens and their spaceships are full color and bound to attract youngsters to this book. An author's note gives more in depth history including other similar radio hoaxes and could extend the interest and usefulness of this book to middle schoolers. This would be a fun addition to technology history and to discussions of modern Internet hoaxes and the need to verify sources.

Grades 2 - up

Mammoths on the Move, by Lisa Wheeler

Extinct for thousands of years, the woolly mammoths presented here in a rhyming text and superb oversized scratchboard and watercolor illustrations will re-ignite the imaginations of young listeners. The rhyming text is a unique way to present factual information and will lend itself well to read aloud and sharing with a group. The illustrations appropriately shaggy in texture and often capturing only part of the huge animal are what really work to bring the subject close up.

Grades 1-4

Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom, by Tim Tingle

Bok Chitto was a river in Mississippi that served as a boundary between the Choctaw Indian people on one side and the plantations and slaves on the other side. If a slave made it across the river, the slave was free. In this story, Martha Tom a young Choctaw girl is lost on the plantation side when a young boy, named Little Mo (short for Moses) helps her to find the crossing home. Later when Little Mo's family is to be separated by the sale of his mother, he leads his family to freedom by crossing the river in plain sight of the guards and their dogs who are struck still by a seeming band of angels escorting the family to freedom. This story is haunting both in the illustrations and in the cultural customs particularly the songs of each.

Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, by Russell Freedman

Freedman adds details and depth to the now familiar story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. He offers the background needed to understand that hers was not the first refusal but part of a growing movement waiting for an appropriate test case. He then goes on to show how the incident catapaulted a young and gifted minister, Martin Luther King Jr. to leadership and how the perseverance and steady resolve of a city population willing to walk to work for a greater cause, to face arrest and violence if necessary, and to organize and support each other started a movement and brought about change. Freedman uses the voices of participants to bring the story to life.

Grades 4 and up