Caroline Parr

    Two kinds of young readers are hard to buy books for:  the reader who reads everything, and the reader who reads nothing.  For the first kind of reader, finding out what the child has read lately can help avoid the disappointment of a second or third copy of a book that the recipient has already read.  For the second type of reader, try informational books.   

    Nonfiction appeals to kids who don’t read much, because these books tend to have strong visual elements and often allow readers to jump around in the text depending on what interests them most.  Believing firmly that you can’t make kids read but have to meet them where they are, I suggest the following stellar nonfiction for reluctant readers on your list.

    This year, why not shop locally for your holiday presents?  Jabberwocky Children’s Books, an independent children’s bookstore that has graced downtown Fredericksburg for over twenty years, has a wide selection and knowledgeable staff. Like most bookstores, they will special order any book they don’t have in stock. 

    While you’re shopping locally, look for books by local authors.  We are lucky to have a talented group of writers and illustrators for children in this area, many of whom I have come to know over the years.  Here are just a few suggestions.

    Nine months before Rosa Parks made history, a fifteen-year-old girl was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.  Claudette Colvin was well aware of the convoluted rules about where blacks could sit on the city buses, but on this day she decided not to obey the bus driver’s command to give up her seat.  She was arrested and eventually convicted of assault and violating the segregation law. 

    Deemed too emotional to become the public face of the civil rights cause, Colvin has been a footnote to history for the last fifty years. But that has changed with the publication of Philip Hoose’s “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” winner of this year’s National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

    Thanksgiving disasters usually take the form of dried-out turkey or not enough mashed potatoes.  But for the Peterkin family, proper Victorians all, Thanksgiving disaster strikes when their dinner simply disappears.  In “The Peterkins’ Thanksgiving,” Elizabeth Spurr has adapted one of Lucretia Hale’s charming stories about this hapless family into a picture book edition illustrated with cheerful whimsy by Wendy Anderson Halperin.

    Oliver Olson’s problem is over-protective parents.  When his third grade teacher opens a space unit by asking, “How many of you would like to walk on the moon?”, Oliver doesn’t raise his hand.  “Oliver’s parents would never let him walk on the moon.  The moon was too far away.  It was too cold.  It didn’t have enough gravity. The rocket might explode.”  And when his teacher announces that the whole class is invited to a space sleepover at school, he knows he won’t be allowed to go.  Ever since Oliver was a sickly preschooler, his parents have worried about him too much.

    If your children watched the “Baby Einstein” videos, but failed to turn into geniuses, you can get your money back.  A recently settled suit against Disney, the owner of the popular series, asserts that the claim that the videos are educational is unfair and deceptive.  Parents can get a refund of $15.99 for up to four of the videos.  

    Fortunately, at least one way to help your child to grow intellectually is free and widely available.  You guessed it – reading to your child from books you can borrow from your local public library.  Not only is it free, but numerous studies show the benefits of early read-aloud sessions.  Just pick up one of our “Every Child Ready to Read” brochures, and plunge in!

She’s only four feet tall and 110 pounds, but little “Ardi” is causing a sensation among paleoanthropologists. Earlier this month, after fifteen years of research, scientists reported that they had identified Ardi’s skeleton as the oldest hominid known to modern humans. Ardipithecus ramidus, as she is formally known, lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. She’s remarkable not just for her age, but for what she tells us about human evolution. Scientists are re-arranging the human family tree in light of this new research.

 The next time you’re in the library, take a look at some of the newest books to grace library shelves.  Readers of all ages will be entranced with Jerry Pinkney’s wordless edition of Aesop’s “The Lion and the Mouse.”  The story of kindness rewarded has a simple plot filled with action, just right for a wordless treatment.

 After more than twenty years of introducing children to great books, PBS’s Reading Rainbow television series has come to an end.   Over the course of 155 programs, host Levar Burton visited museums and pueblos, interviewed entrepreneurs and biologists, showed us how crayons are made and how oil spills are cleaned up, all the while linking the real world to the best in children’s literature.  Here’s a look at a few favorite books Levar introduced over the years.

While our children write their lessons with pencils and computers, Pakistani schoolchildren in the village of Korphe used to write on the ground with sticks.  Then one day a lost climber stumbled into their village, and everything changed.

Adults may recognize this as the story of Greg Mortensen, well-known for the bestselling book, “Three Cups of Tea,” about his work building schools in Pakistan.  Now young children can learn the story in his new picture book, “Listen to the Wind, The Story of Dr. Greg and Three Cups of Tea.”