Winter 2024 Reading Recommendations

12/7/24

Just in time for keeping busy while traveling for the holidays or cozying up under a blanket at home, here are our winter reading recommendations. This list of books has a special twist— they all have been adapted into movies. It’s up to our intrepid readers to decide if the silver screen manages to capture the magic on the page.

The Tale of Despereaux By Kate DiCamillo

Despereaux, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. A rat called Roscuro, lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. Miggery Sow, a serving girl with an impossible wish. These three characters embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and into each other's lives.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh By Robert C. O’Brien

Before the touching movie brought tears to the eyes of 80’s children everywhere it was an equally affecting book. Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with four small children, must move her family immediately or face almost certain death. Fortunately, she encounters the rats of NIMH, an extraordinary breed of highly intelligent creatures, who come up with a brilliant solution to her dilemma.

The Borrowers By Mary Norton

Adapted as both a live-action film and animated by famed Studio Ghibli, this novel about small people with big hearts continues stoking readers’ imaginations. The Clock family are tiny people who live underneath the kitchen floor of an English manor and who “borrow” from the “human beans” who tromp loudly above them. All is well until one of them is spotted by a human!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Orphan, clock keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. Hugo's undercover life is put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo's dead father form the backbone of this tender mystery.

The City of Ember By Jeanne DuPrau

The city of Ember was built as a last refuge for the human race. Two hundred years later, the great lamps that light the city are beginning to dim. When Lina finds part of an ancient message, she’s sure it holds a secret that will save the city. Now, she and her friend Doon must race to figure out the clues to keep the lights on.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before By Jenny Han

The start of this famed series asks what if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them all at once? Sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song writes “love letters” where she pours out her heart and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day all her secret letters are mailed…

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. A celebrated tale of survival that explores the power of storytelling to transform and redeem.

Cloud Atlas By David Mitchell

For more advanced readers (and watchers) this novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point, revealing how his disparate characters' fates intertwine.

Jurassic Park By Michael Crichton

A book that launched an utterly epic franchise— Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them - for a price. Until something goes wrong...

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race By Margot Lee Shetterly

A group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would astronauts into space. Even as Jim Crow laws segregated talented African American women from their white counterparts, the women of Langley's all-Black West Computing group helped America achieve a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War.