Summer 2023 Reading Recommedations
6/3/23
In need of a summer read? Here are some real-life inspired stories to keep your young writer engaged in between their summer adventures.
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros tells the story of Esperanza Cordero (based on Cisneros's own adolescence), whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong--not to her rundown neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous–it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become.
The Boys in the Boat (Young Reader’s Adaption) by Gregory Mone and Daniel James Brown tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew’s epic quest for Olympic gold. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals, and finally, the crew rowing for Hitler’s Germany in the Berlin games in 1936. Their trust in each other makes for a victorious team, with everyone quite literally pulling together. Drawing on the boys' own diaries and journals, to show the improbable story of nine working-class boys who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what grit meant.
Never Caught: The Story of Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a narrative of Ona Judge, George Washington’s runaway slave. When Washington was elected president, he left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. He took nine slaves, including Ona Judge. Pennsylvania law required enslaved people to be set free after six months of residency in the state. Washington circumvented the law by sending Ona back down south just as the clock was about to expire. When the opportunity presented itself one clear spring, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. At just twenty-two years old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer recounts when fourteen-year-old William Kamkwamba’s Malawi village was hit by a drought, everyone’s crops began to fail. Without enough money for food, let alone school, William spent his days in the library and figured out how to bring electricity to his village. Persevering against the odds, William built a functioning windmill out of junkyard scraps and thus became the local hero who harnessed the wind
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is the story of Satrapi’s unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval. This graphic novel is a chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.
Wheels of Change: How Women Rode The Bicycle to Freedom by Sue Macy takes a look at history from aboard a bicycle, an invention that granted freedom of mobility and helped empower women’s liberation. Through vintage photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and songs, Wheels of Change transports young readers to bygone eras to see how women used the bicycle to improve their lives. The book covers early (and comical) objections, influence on fashion, and impact on social change inspired by the bicycle, which, according to Susan B. Anthony, “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”
Maybe An Artist by Elizabeth Montague is a heartfelt and funny graphic novel memoir from one of the first Black female cartoonists to be published in the New Yorker when she was just 22 years old. When Liz Montague was a senior in college, she wrote to the New Yorker, asking them why they didn't publish more inclusive comics. The New Yorker wrote back asking if she could recommend any. She said yes, me. A memoir of Liz's youth, from the age of five through college--how she overcame severe dyslexia through art and found the confidence to pursue her passion. She captures the age-old adolescent questions of “Who am I?” and “What do I want to be?”
Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation. Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things―from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen―provide lessons every day.