Summer reading programs at the libraries:
Reach out to your local public library. Brookline and Boston have programs starting to encourage summer reading.
Barnes and Noble
Every year Barnes and Noble provides incentives for kids in grades K - 6 to do some summer reading. Fill out a simple form showing you read 8 books this summer and turn it in to any Barnes and Noble store. You can then choose one free book from a list!
Have a great long weekend, everyone!
Walter Tipple is looking for adventure. He keeps having a dream that his big brother, Tank, appears before him and says, “Let’s you and me go see my world, little man.” But Tank went to the army and never came home, and Walter doesn’t know how to see the world without him.
Then he meets Posey, the brash new girl from next door, and an eccentric man named Banjo, who’s off on a bodacious adventure of his own. What follows is a summer of taking chances, becoming braver, and making friends―and maybe Walter can learn who he wants to be without the brother he always wanted to be like. Middle grade realistic fiction. Every chapter is a page turner!
Twelve-year-old Cici has just moved from Taiwan to Seattle, and the only thing she wants more than to fit in at her new school is to celebrate her grandmother, A-má’s, seventieth birthday together.
Since she can’t go to A-má, Cici cooks up a plan to bring A-má to her by winning the grand prize in a kids’ cooking contest to pay for A-má’s plane ticket! There’s just one problem: Cici only knows how to cook Taiwanese food. A graphic novel.
Wrapping up the year!
With five weeks of school left, this is a reminder to return overdue books to the school library. The library will close on June 8 in order to get all materials back on the shelves in proper order and in good condition. Please look around at home for any books with the Lawrence School Library barcode and return them to school as soon as possible.
After June 8 I recommend that you look into the public library's new browsing routines, found here on their website. They will be opening for limited browsing starting June 1--just in time for summer reading!
Book suggestions:
Ailey is disappointed when a tryout for his school's production of The Wiz doesn't go as planned. He quickly has to put his disappointment aside, however, when his grandfather falls and ends up in the hospital. In a conversation with his grandfather, Ailey finds out about some special tap shoes that his grandfather entrusts him with. When Ailey puts them on he finds himself back in 1939 meeting his grandfather when he was a boy. This time travel/ historical fiction mashup will keep you turning pages. How will Ailey get back to 2010? Will his grandfather take a chance and change the direction of his life?
Marisol Rainey’s mother was born in the Philippines. Marisol’s father works and lives part-time on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. And Marisol, who has a big imagination and likes to name inanimate objects, has a tree in her backyard she calls Peppina . . . but she’s way too scared to climb it. This all makes Marisol the only girl in her small Louisiana town with a mother who was born elsewhere and a father who lives elsewhere (most of the time)—the only girl who’s fearful of adventure and fun. Short chapters, a fun beginning to a new series!
Things never seem to go as easily for thirteen-year-old Frankie as they do for her sister, Tess. Unlike Tess, Frankie is neurodivergent. In her case, that means she can't stand to be touched, loud noises bother her, she's easily distracted, she hates changes in her routine, and she has to go see a therapist while other kids get to hang out at the beach. It also means Frankie has trouble making friends. She did have one--Colette--but they're not friends anymore. It's complicated.
Just weeks before the end of seventh grade, Colette unexpectedly shows up at Frankie's door. The next morning, Colette vanishes. Now, after losing Colette yet again, Frankie's convinced that her former best friend left clues behind that only she can decipher, so she persuades her reluctant sister to help her unravel the mystery of Colette's disappearance before it's too late.
April didn't mean to start the fire. She wasn’t the one who broke the vase. April didn’t ask to go live in a big, creepy mansion with a bunch of orphans who just don't understand that April isn’t like them. After all, April’s mother is coming back for her someday very soon.
All April has to do is find the clues her mother left inside the massive mansion. But Winterborne House is hiding more than one secret, so April and her friends are going to have to work together to unravel the riddle of a missing heir, a creepy legend, and a mysterious key before the only home they’ve ever known is lost to them forever. Book one in a new series!
They also are adding book bundles for kids of all ages (and not just for school vacation weeks anymore!). Ask about it the next time you're at the library!
