Summer Reading 2022: Lower School

River wants so badly to dance at powwow day as she does every year. In this uplifting and contemporary picture book perfect for beginning readers, follow River's journey from feeling isolated after an illness to learning the healing power of community.

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The boy loves to be naked. He romps around his house naked and wild and free. Until he romps into his parents' closet and is inspired to get dressed. This charming and humorous story was inspired by bestselling and award-winning author Peter Brown's own childhood, and highlights nontraditional gender roles and self-expression.

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Epic has tricks you won't believe. He's the kick flipping, big rail king. When his family moves to a new neighborhood, he can't wait to hit the street with his skateboard. But his old moves don't feel fresh without a crew to see 'em. Epic thinks about giving up his board to fit in, but an encouraging word from his dad helps him see that the trick to making new friends is to always be yourself.

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Brilliant Bea is an endearing and empowering story that demonstrates that a learning difference like dyslexia doesn't define who you are. Despite her struggles with reading and writing, Beatrice is a natural and brilliant storyteller. With the help of a kind-hearted teacher, Beatrice uses an old-fashioned tape recorder so she can speak her words and them play them back, as a technique for learning in whole new way. With her new approach, Beatrice is able to show her classmates who she really has been all along.

Child, you are awake! You are alive! You are a bright star, Inside our hearts. With a voice full of calm, contemplative wisdom, readers are invited to listen and observe, to accept themselves-and to dare to shout! In a world full of uncertainty, Bright Star seeks to offer reassurance and courage.

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Remember to dream your own dreams. Love your beautiful skin. You always have a choice. This book addresses--honestly, yet hopefully--the experiences Black children face growing up with systemic racism, as well as providing hope for the future and delivering a message of empowerment to a new generation of dreamers. It's a message that is both urgent and timeless--and offers a rich and rewarding reading experience for every child.

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The colors of Hispaniola burst into life in this striking, evocative debut picture book that celebrates the joy of being Dominican. This exuberantly colorful, softly rhyming picture book is a gentle reminder that a nation's hues are as wide as nature itself.

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On a dreary, stuck-inside kind of day, a brother and sister heed their grandmother's advice: "Use those beautiful and brilliant minds of yours. Lift your arms, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and believe in a thing. Somebody somewhere at some point was just as bored you are now." And before they know it, their imaginations lift them up and out of their boredom. Then, on a day full of quarrels, it's time for a trip outside their minds again, and they are able to leave their anger behind. This precious skill, their grandmother tells them, harkens back to the days long before they were born, when their ancestors showed the world the strength and resilience of their beautiful and brilliant minds.

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Look around! Can you see? The many spaces, places, and ways to show the world all that you can be? From painting, music, and slam poetry, to engineering, protesting, and photography, a young narrator journeys through her neighborhood, encouraging readers to explore all the many ways they can express themselves.

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The People Remember tells the journey of African descendants in America by connecting their history to the seven principles of Kwanzaa. It begins in Africa, where people were taken from their homes and families. They spoke different languages and had different customs. Yet they were bound and chained together and forced onto ships sailing into an unknown future. Ultimately, all these people had to learn one common language and create a culture that combined their memories of home with new traditions that enabled them to thrive in this new land.

On Dream Street, love between generations rules, everyone is special, and the warmth of the neighborhood shines. This book is a perfect way for parents to share with their children the importance of community.

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Early one Saturday morning, a boy prepares for a trip to The Other Side/El Otro Lado. It's close--just down the street from his school--and it's a twin of where he lives This is a loving story of a father and son's weekend ritual, a demonstration of community care, and a tribute to the fluidity, complexity, and vibrancy of life on the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Wishes tells the powerful, honest story about one Vietnamese family's search for a new home on the other side of the world, and the long-lasting and powerful impact that makes on one of the youngest members of the family.

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This empathetic and inclusive picture book empowers kids to love themselves and their identities, stand up to hate, and have each others' backs no matter what.

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No matter who you are or where you're from, everyone is welcome here. From grandmothers reading lines of the Qur'an and the imam telling stories of living as one, to meeting new friends and learning to help others, mosques are centers for friendship, community, and love.

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All the big and small reasons why we love the people we do within a call-and-response picture book that features families across the spectrum.

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This picture book is a pure celebration of all the different human bodies that exist in the world. Highlighting the various skin tones, body shapes, and hair types is just the beginning in this truly inclusive book.

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When Ebere's mother puts her to bed at night, she always says, "Remember to dream, Ebere." And dream, Ebere does!

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Beauty is a Puerto Rican girl loved and admired by her family and community. At first, she's awake to their beauty, and her own--a proud Boricua of Taíno and African descent. But as she grows older, she sees how people who look like her are treated badly, and she forgets what makes her special. So her community bands together to help remind her of her beautiful heritage.

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A stunning celebration of the many things you can be! What will you choose to be? The possibilities are endless in this uplifting ode to the power of potential and highlights the inherent beauty of all Black and brown children.

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Beginning in Africa before 1619, Your Legacy presents an unprecedentedly accessible, empowering, and proud introduction to African American history for children.

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Anything is possible when our voices join together. As a young girl leads a cast of characters on a musical journey, they learn that they have the power to make changes--big or small--in the world, in their communities, and in most importantly, in themselves.

Meet Zubi: a joyful Bangladeshi girl excited about her first day of school. But when Zubi sees her mother frowning in the mirror and talking about being "too big," she starts to worry about her own body and how she looks. As her day goes on, she hears more and more people being critical of each other's and their own bodies, until her outburst over dinner leads her family to see what they've been doing wrong--and to help Zubi see that we can all make the world a more beautiful place by being beautifully ourselves.

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A gorgeously illustrated picture book about Asian American changemakers doing everything they dreamed of and inspiring all of us to reach for new heights!

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What do you see when you look in the mirror, Mei? Do you see beauty? We see eyes that point toward the sun, that give us the warmth and joy of a thousand rays when you smile. We see hair as inky black and smooth as a peaceful night sky. We see skin brushed with gold. This richly metaphoric celebration of Chinese American identity offers a loving, affecting tribute to how children of immigrants can serve as bridges and torchbearers for their communities.

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A young boy comes to recognize his own power and ability to change the future. When a friend at school creates a hurtful drawing, the boy turns to his family for comfort. He realizes that his eyes rise to the skies and speak to the stars, shine like sunlit rays, and glimpse trails of light from those who came before--in fact, his eyes are like his father's, his agong's, and his little brother's, and they are visionary. Inspired by the men in his family, he recognizes his own power and strength from within.

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It's Afghan schoolgirl Aria's first day back at school since her accident. She's excited, but she's also worried about sitting on the hard floor all day with her new prosthetic "helper-leg." Just as Aria feared, sitting on the floor is so uncomfortable that she can't think about learning at all. She knows that before the war changed many things in Afghanistan, schools like hers had benches for students to sit at. If she had a bench, her leg would not hurt so much. The answer is obvious: she will gather materials, talk to Kaka Najar, the carpenter in the old city, and learn to build a bench for herself. This story reveals the resilience and resolve of young children--especially young girls--who face barriers to education.

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A young student receives a family tree assignment in school, but she can only trace back three generations. Grandma gathers the whole family, and the student learns that 400 years ago, in 1619, their ancestors were stolen and brought to America by white slave traders. But before that, they had a home, a land, a language. She learns how the people said to be born on the water survived. And the people planted dreams and hope, willed themselves to keep living. And the people learned new words for love, for friend, for family, for joy, for grow, for home.

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Shanti misses the warm monsoon rains in India. Now in America, she watches fall leaves fly past her feet. Still, her family's apartment feels like a village: Mama cooking luchi, funny stories in Bangla, and Baba's big laugh. But outside, everything is different - trick-or-treating, ballet class, and English books. Back and forth, Shanti trudges between her two worlds. She remembers her village and learns her new town. She watches Bollywood movies at home and Hollywood movies with her friends. She is Indian. She is also American. How should she define home?

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It's Dat's first day of school in a new country! Dat and his Mah made a long journey to get here, and Dat doesn't know the language. To Dat, everything everybody says -- from the school bus driver to his new classmates -- sounds like gibberish. How is Dat going to make new friends if they can't understand each other? Luckily there's a friendly girl in Dat's class who knows that there are other ways to communicate, besides just talking. Could she help make sense of the gibberish?

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Young Kalia has never known life beyond the fences of the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. When she asks what is beyond the fence, at first her father has no answers for her. But on the following day, he leads her to the tallest tree in the camp and, secure in her father's arms, Kalia sees the spread of a world beyond.

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Calvin has always been a boy, even if the world sees him as a girl. He knows who he is in his heart and in his mind but he hasn't yet told his family. Finally, he can wait no longer- "I'm not a girl," he tells his family. "I'm a boy--a boy in my heart and in my brain." Quick to support him, his loving family takes Calvin shopping for the swim trunks he's always wanted and back-to-school clothes and a new haircut that helps him look and feel like the boy he's always known himself to be. As the first day of school approaches, he's nervous and the "what-ifs" gather up inside him. But as his friends and teachers rally around him and he tells them his name, all his "what-ifs" begin to melt away.

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