A fascinating historical look at globalization that covers botany, anthropology, politics, exploration, the slave trade, and more! 1493 for Young People: From Columbus’s Voyage to Globalization by Charles C. Mann and adapted by Rebecca Stefoff. Triangle Square, 2016. 416 pages. Reading Level: Ages 12-15Recommended For: Ages 10 and up (note considerations below) When Columbus reached the shores of the Americas, he unwittingly launched a new era in the history of Earth. Everything changed. Mann’s focus isn’t on Columbus “discovering” America. Rather, he looks at how Columbus’s voyage jumpstarted globalization, focusing in turn on trans-Atlantic trade and trans-Pacific trade. People’s craze for new products, or cheaper products (such as tobacco), fueled…

For Spacious Skies, Most Wanted, and Thomas Paine and the Dangerous Word feature the promise of the American experiment. For Spacious Skies: Katharine Lee Bates and the Inspiration for “America the Beautiful” by Nancy Churnin, illustrated by Olga Baumert. Albert Whitman, 2020, 32 pages, including timeline and bibliography. Reading level: Picture Book, ages 4-8 Recommended for: ages 6-10 Katherine Lee Bates spent her early girlhood in the shadow of the Civil War, while “the country’s heart was ripped in two.” After the war ended, her small seacoast town in Massachusetts didn’t seem to offer much for a bookish girl who loved to write. But her widowed mother worked long hours…

In The Friend Who Forgives, we read about impatient, impetuous Peter and his faithful, forgiving friend Jesus. *The Friend Who Forgives: A True Story About how Peter Failed and Jesus Forgave (Tales that Tell the Truth) by Dan Dewitt and illustrated by Catalina Echeverri. The Good Book Company, 2018. 32 pages. Reading Level: Ages 4-8Recommended For: Ages 0-10 Do you ever have a hard time keeping your temper? Watching carefully over what you say? What about making hasty decisions you later regret? Peter can empathize! In The Friend Who Forgives, Dewitt draws out Peter’s somewhat volatile personality and contrasts it with Jesus who forgives–even when Peter denies him three times!…

Jonah and the Very Big Fish has fun with language and offers the full story of Jonah–there’s more than the whale! Jonah and the Very Big Fish (Very Best Bible Stories) by Tim Thornborough and illustrated by Jennifer Davison. The Good Book Company, 2019. 24 pages. Reading Level: Ages 4-8Recommended For: Ages 0-8 Jonah retellings are nothing new in Bible storybook land. But this Jonah story does a little something different. First, Thornborough plays with words. A lot. Kids who are fascinated by words will enjoy the extravagant use of them in this book. For instance, when God sends the storm, “the sailors were horrified, terrified, petrified, jelly-died.” Adjectives galore!…

The Blackbird Girls takes readers to the shadow of Chernobyl and the world’s worst nuclear disaster. The Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman. Viking, 2020, 334 pages. Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12 Recommended for: ages 10-15 The City of Pripyat, Ukraine, is one of the more prosperous in the Soviet Union because many of its citizens work at the nearby nuclear plant (known informally as Chernobyl). But the Saturday morning in April when Valentine Kaplan wakes up to a red sky in the south, she knows something is wrong. A closer look reveals what it is: the power station is on fire. And her father, who works the night shift,…

Swashbuckling adventure with mythical Medieval Vikings? Sign me up. The Brotherband Chronicles by John Flanagan. Philomel, 2011-present. Reading Level: Ages 12-15Recommended For: Ages 12 and up About the Brotherband Chronicles’ Story Hal Mikkelson is half Araluen and half Skandian. He’s all outcast. In a society of Viking-esque, burly fighters like the Skandians, a skinny inventor-type naturally doesn’t fit in. When the coming-of-age Brotherband training arrives, Hal forms a team of similar outcasts: boys who each have something that sets them apart from mainstream Skandian society. Their “coach”? Thorn, also an outcast, but an outcast with a lengthy history as one of Skandia’s most formidable warriors–before he lost his hand, that…