Book Finder

Silvey’s years of experience reading, evaluating, and publishing children’s books combines with her passion for literature that endures over time and generations comes together in this insightful glimpses at 100 books. These are both time-tested and modern classics that have and will continue to delight children from birth to about 12 years. Intriguing stories about the books and their creators are included with each short, descriptive essay. Additional titles are suggested as is a suggestion to keep a reading journal.

Recognizing a “golden age” of young adult literature, Silvey combines her considerable experience and a love of literature to identify and write about books for young adults. Many were written specifically for that audience; others were published as adult books but of interest to younger readers. The books are organized by subject that appeal to young adults (e.g., humor, horror, historical fiction) and that represent a level of quality. Additional titles are recommended, including audio books. Additionally, books are listed by geographic location and by suggested age ranges (up to 18).

Ellen and William Craft, an enslaved married couple, devised a daring plan to escape to freedom. Capitalizing on Ellen’s mixed race heritage and light skin, she would dress herself as a wealthy white man, while William posed as her slave.

Told with verve and humor, Newbery-winner Sid Fleischman recalls his early years in San Diego during the Depression, reveals how he became captivated by magic, theater, and story — all of which influenced the man he grew into.

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States, led the nation through its darkest hour — the Civil War. Find out about Lincoln’s childhood on a frontier farm, how a struggling small town lawyer became president, and why he is one of America’s most revered and beloved leaders.

Alicia was only 13 years old when she began saving Jewish lives in war-ravaged Poland. In this nonfiction account of the Holocaust, Alicia recalls how she stood on her brother’s grave and vowed she would tell his story.

This plane crash adventure story concerns the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the mountains. Forced to do whatever they needed to survive, they turn to cannibalism to stay alive. This ultimate story of survival is still compelling several years later. Fans of the TV show Lost will enjoy this title.

Little did Gerda know that her father’s insistence that she wear her hiking boots one hot, summer day would be her salvation from death. Gerda was able to see good even in the darkest of moments while struggling to survive in several concentration and slave labor camps. From January through April 1945, it was those boots that saved her from the cold during a brutal, 300-mile death march from a labor camp in western Germany to Czechoslovakia where she was the only one of 120 women who survived.

In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance.

1961. Nearly two decades before Sally Ride — there was Jerrie Cobb. Cobb was one of the top female pilots in the country and completed all the astronaut testing the Mercury 7 men did. She excelled at all the tests. Proved she had the Right Stuff. Twelve other female pilots followed her, passing the tests they took with flying colors. When they were told there was no room for women in the space program, they took they’re cause to Congress.

Amelia Earhart was a fiesty 11-year-old when she saw her first air show. Little did she know that a passing fancy for airplanes would develop into a full-throttled passion. As a committed social worker, feminist and record-breaking female pilot, Amelia’s disappearance while flying over the South Pacific remains one of our greatest mysteries.

Experience the growth of the environmental movement in poetry, essay, song, and prose from its infancy to present day through the eyes of its champions.

Bright and carefree, Zitkála-Sá grows up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries arrive, offering the reservation’s children a free education. The catch: They must leave their parents behind and travel to Indiana. Curious about the world beyond the reservation, Zitkála-Sá begs her mother to let her go—and her mother, aware of the advantages that an education offers, reluctantly agrees. But the missionary school is not the adventure that Zitkála-Sá expected: The school is a strict one, her long hair is cut short, and only English is spoken. She encounters racism and ridicule. Slowly, Zitkála-Sá adapts to her environment—excelling at her studies, winning prizes for essay-writing and oration. But the price of success is estrangement from her cultural roots—and is it one she is willing to pay?

The author reflects on the childhood dream that led him, as an adult, to take a break from Princeton and travel to China’s famed Shaolin Temple to study martial arts for two years.

Mowat retells his own experiences as a young soldier during World War II. At first he was very idealistic and romanticized the war effort but after exposure to many atrocities, Farley grows and learns painfully to see war as it is.

The Campbell’s Soup Cans. The Marilyns. The Electric Chairs. The Flowers. The work created by Andy Warhol elevated everyday images to art, ensuring Warhol a fame that has far outlasted the 15 minutes he predicted for everyone else. His very name is synonymous with the 1960s American art movement known as Pop. Warhol’s rise, from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to status as a Pop icon, is an absorbing tale—one in which the American dream of fame and fortune is played out in all of its success and its excess. No artist of the late 20th century took the pulse of his time—and ours—better than Andy Warhol.

Informal text and photographs of multi-hued animal subjects explain the reasons for their coloring.

Firlik brings honest appraisal of her work with less heroism and more day-to-day problem solving as she moves from intern to doctor. Along the way she removes a nail in a carpenter’s head and allows maggots to clean pus out of an infected brain in this humorous and candid memoir.

Seventeen-year-old Sarah Jane’s journal entries chronicle her journey by clipper ship from Massachusetts to Alabama, then on to Russia and other European countries in 1857. Photos, maps, drawings, and letters accompany journal text and bring the passengers and setting to life.

Polls of readers about home & school, friends & family, sports & more lets young people know if they’re ‘normal’ or ‘weird’ while affirming that they are unique.

A father’s anguished account of his promising son’s meth addiction and its painful impact on the entire family is honest, raw, and full of information about the realities of drug addiction.

This book captures the voices of the forgotten men, women, and children who worked in the cotton industry in America over the centuries. The voices of the slaves who toiled in the fields in the South, the poor sharecroppers who barely got by, and the girls who gave their lives to the New England mills spring to life through oral histories, archival photos, and an engaging narrative prose style. 

The author was only six years old when the Nazis invaded Poland. She and her mother go into hiding with the help of some Gentiles, but their hiding place happens to be next door to the Gestapo headquarters. For the two years they are in hiding, Nelly records her fears, hopes, and dreams through art and in a journal.

Benjamin Franklin’s many talents are presented here in word and image. The organization from Ben’s childhood to the end of his life is enhanced by the use of a scrapbook-like format.