Library book picture book recommendations are by Angela Ferraris, The Retired School Librarian.
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This Is a Story
by John Schu (Author), Lauren Castillo (Illustrator). Publisher: Candlewick. 2023. PreK-2. Hardcover Picture Book. ISBN-13 : 978-1536204520.
Brief summary: The title page begins this story with a girl receiving a library card from her father.
One word on a page of a book from a shelf waits in a library. A little girl walks to the library with her father and younger sibling. She goes into the children’s section carrying a seahorse kite, where a librarian helps her narrow her search from many of the books to the perfect one–a sea horse library book. She begins to read. Other readers in the area are reading books we all know and love that are connected to our hearts and imagination.
The little girl has found her special library book and now helps her younger brother find his. She uses her library card to check out.
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Rating: 4/5 📗📗📗📗
If you enjoy this book, you may like John Schu’s This is a School.
This Book Is My Best Friend
by Robin Robinson (Author, Illustrator). Publisher : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. 2023. PreK-2. Hardcover Picture Book. ISBN-13 : 978-1665906814.
Brief summary: Two best friends, Sunny and Aarush, want to check out the same library book, Factory Friends, but there is only one copy. They each try to persuade the other why the book is their best friend and needs it more. Having failed at trying to book talk each other into other books to check out instead, they realize how to share the library book.
I recommend this book to school librarians who have students fighting over a book, as I have done many times in my school libraries. (They did not always share, so I had a big die on my desk. The one who rolled the highest number could read it first).
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Rating: 3.5/5 📗📗📗1/2
Palace of Books
by Patricia Polacco (Author, Illustrator). Publisher : Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books. 2023. PreK-5. Hardcover Picture Book. ISBN-13 : 978-1534451315.
Brief summary: As a girl, Patricia Polacco’s family moves from Union City to Battle Creek, Michigan. It is hard for her to adjust from living in a rural area with birds, trees, and wheat fields to a place in the city. She is thrilled that a bird has a nest in a tree outside her bedroom.
One day she walks home from school, taking a different route, and discovers a stately building with giant pillars along the front with many steps leading up to a porch.
She discovers it is the Willard Library and full of books for people to borrow. She gets up enough courage to go inside, where she meets the librarian, Mrs. Creavy, who helps her find bird books and even shares the notable books of John James Audubon, full of watercolors of birds.
Soon, Patricia paints birds and shares them with her class. Mrs. Creavy has given the class tickets to visit the Bird Sanctuary. This sparks an Audubon bird club at Fremont Elementary School for the next sixty years.
I will always recommend a book by Patricia Polacco, as she is one of the best storytellers and illustrators in the USA. I was honored to have her as a guest author for our elementary school. I will always cherish having lunch with this legendary author and illustrator that day in our little elementary library.
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Rating: 5/5 📗📗📗📗📗
The Library Fish Learns to Read (The Library Fish Books)
by Alyssa Satin Capucilli (Author), Gladys Jose (Illustrator). Publisher : Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books. PreK-2. 2023. Hardcover. ISBN-13 : 978-1534477070.
Brief summary: Library Fish lives in a bowl on Mr. Hughes’s, the librarian, desk where she watches the students check books in and out of the public library. One day, she is listening to Mr. Hughes tell a story about a dog learning how to read and is inspired that she too would like to learn to read. After the librarian said good night, Library Fish gets out of her bowl (with special accommodations), and begins to teacher her self the ABCs. Each night she practices until she can read books.
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Rating: 3/5 📗📗📗