Children's Book Week is a twice a year celebration and in 2023 occurs during the weeks of May 1-7 and Nov. 6-12. It is the annual celebration of books for young people and the joy of reading. Established in 1919, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. Every year, young people across the country participate by attending events at schools, libraries, bookstores, celebrating at home, and engaging with book creators both online and in person.
Created to celebrate new, noteworthy, and upcoming books in children's publishing, Children's Book Week is a wonderful time to celebrate both classics and new favorites. It is not only a celebration of books, but of connection. It is a vehicle to unite kids and adults with books, authors, and illustrators in order to foster a love of reading in all.
- Ways to Participate
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What does it mean to participate? It means that you will engage with kids during Children’s Book Week, encouraging them to read, talk about books, connect with book creators, and more. The sky is the limit on how you can be involved in encouraging a life-long love of reading.
- Make plans to highlight children's books with the kids in your care.
- Plan an event or activity like having or attending a special story time.
- Participate in the How Do You Book? challenges and prompts.
- Try your hand at drawing with the help of How Do You Draw? guides
- Check out some of the library's newest Picture Books, Fiction Books, or Non-Fiction Books.
- Find Your Spark Challenge
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Readers of all ages can join in the fun of Children’s Book Week with this year’s Find Your Spark Challenge. The 2023 theme, Read Books. Spark Change. encourages you to think about books as a spark for positive change. This change can take place inside yourself and/or within your community (ex: your family unit, your classroom, school, neighborhood, town, city).
Check out some ideas on how to Find Your Spark!
- Participate in in a scavenger hunt by finding as many different kinds of books as you can. Here are some ideas:
- a book about an invention
- a book with recipes
- a book featuring a team that works together
- a book about the future
- a book about making something with your hands
- a book with different perspectives
- a book about your favorite talent or ability
- a book about a real life person
- Help kids read one (or more) of the books they found that sparked with them. Guide them to express what sparked in them by writing, telling, showing, drawing, or however they wish to express themselves.
- Help kids take the spark they found and turn it into something they can share. Did they discover a few different sparks in the books read? Think of ways to connect them.
Prompts: Help children to ponder the books they gravitate towards with the prompts below. These prompts encourage young people to think creatively and critically about the types of books they like and encourage them to explore new genres and formats.
- Draw or write about your favorite part of the day. Where is it? Who are you with?
- Is there a book that someone read to you when you were younger that you still love? Draw a picture of your favorite part of the book.
- Who is your favorite character from a book? How are you and that character similar?
- Is there an object or trinket in a book you read that stood out to you? Did you use your imagination while reading to picture what it would look like? Use your imagination to draw it.
- Draw a comic about your day-to-day life. Add an extra square that represents something you want to add to your daily routine (seeing friends after school, taking a walk with your pet, trying a new food, or anything you can think of).
- If you could be any character from a book, who would you be and why? Is there anything you would change about the character?
- Think of a memorable quote from a book you love. What makes that quote special? Try coming up with one of your own.
- Is there a book genre you love that you wish more people knew about? Draw your interpretation of your favorite character from that genre.
- What does the perfect book sound like to you? Is it funny? Suspenseful? Is it long or short? Take some time to look back on books you read and loved. What did you love about them?
- Participate in in a scavenger hunt by finding as many different kinds of books as you can. Here are some ideas:
- How Do You Draw?
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Children’s book artists have contributed entertaining lessons in how to draw some of their favorite characters. Each individual drawing instruction is available to follow by viewing online (or to print) for children, teens, and book lovers everywhere. If you love them all, check out all the fun guides.
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New Children's Titles
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Here are some of the most recent books in children's literature.
Children's Board Books: These books are great for babies as they are usually very simple, with high contrast colors, and the pages are made of thick paperboard that is not as fragile as regular paper.
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Peppa and her friends get a class pet in this delightful touch-and-feel storybook based on the hit TV show airing on Nick Jr.
Peppa gets her first class pet in this adorable touch-and-feel storybook! From a soft guinea pig to a slimy goldfish, little ones will love discovering all the small creatures in Peppa's world. There's something new to touch on every spread!Image
The Great Truck Switcheroo by Bob Shea
Cute Pups! Big Trucks! These three puppies must swap their beloved trucks in this original board book that's perfect for toddlers with big building dreams.
Dig Dug, Puddles, and Cheddar have some very important work to do . . . but it seems absolutely impossible to drive some-puppy else’s truck instead of their own beloved truck, but with a lot of teamwork, these pups just might be able to finish their task before snack time.
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Oakley the Squirrel: Camping 1, 2, 3! by Nancy Rose
This is a counting book like no other. Oakley helps readers learn to count as he experiences the fun of a camping trip. Every page features photos of real squirrels! Photographer Nancy Rose lures squirrels into her photo frame using strategically placed peanuts, so they appear in squirrel-sized sets that replicate human life, complete with tents, s'mores, campfires, and more. It's irresistible!
Children's Picture Books: These books are perfect for children who are not reading on their own yet, generally in the 3 to 6 age range. They rely heavily on pictures and illustrations to tell a story and are great for story time at the library or at home.
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9 Kilometers by Claudio Aguilera
A memorable, compelling story about the perseverance of a child and the human right to education. The sky is still dark when a young boy leaves home for school. He has a long path nine kilometers—over five-and-a-half miles—through the mountains and rain forests of Chile. But the boy doesn’t mind. While he walks, he can count butterflies and lizards, and he can think about where the 15,000 steps he takes every morning could lead. Nine kilometers could bring the boy across ninety soccer fields, up the world’s ten largest buildings, or into a classroom at last.
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100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli by David LaRochelle
High on a mountain live 100 mighty dragons all named Broccoli. When a tremendous wind blows half the dragons away, ten others sail off to become professional surfers in Hawaii. The oldest and youngest dragons take a train to New York City to start their own heavy metal band. And a mysterious wizard turns four more into a unicorn, a werewolf, a zombie, and a tiny pink poodle. Now how many dragons are left?
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All By Myself by Stephanie Shaw
Hen isn’t a little chick anymore. She’s spread her wings and can get a job done just the way she likes it! She can grow wheat herself, she can wheelbarrow it home by herself, and she can turn it into delicious bread all by herself. No need to bother offering Hen a helping hand of any sort, thank you. She’s got it covered!
Children's Early Readers: These books are considered the earliest chapter book a child can experience. Broken up into smaller chapters, early readers are a great way to boost confidence in young readers. While they are mostly read from the ages 5-9, early readers can be enjoyed by anyone!
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Arfy and the Stinky Smell by Troy Cummings
Arfy used to be homeless, but now he's found his forever home with a sweet person and a squeaky bone! But what's that smell? Arfy loves to sniff things out--he's great at it, so he is on the case! He will find the source of this mysterious smell, even if he has to sniff the whole neighborhood! Tag along with Arfy on his newest adventure--illustrated with panels and speech balloons for a fun intro to comics! Comic Readers are told almost entirely in action-packed dialogue! Simple, graphic, paneled layouts introduce emergent readers to the joy of comics.
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April & Mae and the Movie Night by Megan Dowd Lambert
It’s Saturday, and April and Mae are having movie night. Mae gets pineapple on the pizza because April likes it, and April chooses a scary movie because Mae will like it. When the movie ends up being too scary for April, the girls realize that they don't have to like all the same things as long as they like each other!
With imagination and humor, Every Day with April & Mae brings all there is to know and love about friendship to life in a way kids can both relate to and learn from making this a perfect fit for young readers ready to step up from picture books.Image
Meet Dirt and Bugsy – best buds who catch all kinds of bugs – in this fun early reader! Dirt and Bugsy are neighbors, best friends, and bug catchers. Bugs that crawl. Bugs that fly. Bugs that slide. Bugs that hide. When they gather a bunch of beetles, the boys make a plan to sort them into categories. But how will they decide how to sort all those beetles?
Chapter Books or JFiction: These books are generally for children ages 9-12 and they are 4,000-15,000 words in length. These books have more content and more complex language than the children may have seen before. Therefore, they are broken into chapters to help the readers better comprehend the material.
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Figure it Out, Henri Weldon by Tanita Davis
Seventh grader Henrietta Weldon gets to switch schools—finally! She’ll be “mainstreaming” into public school, leaving her special education school behind. She can’t wait for her new schedule, new friends, and new classes.
Henri’s dyscalculia, a learning disability that makes math challenging to process and understand, is what she expects to give her problems. What she doesn’t expect is a family feud with her sister over her new friends, joining the girls’ soccer team, and discovering poetry. Henri’s tutor and new friend, Vinnie, reminds her to take it slow. One problem at a time.Image
The Superteacher Project by Gordon Korman
Oliver Zahn, spitball champion and self-declared rule-wrecker of Brightling Middle School, is not a fan of his new homeroom teacher, Mr. Aidact. The guy is sort of stiff, never cracks a smile, and refers to them as "pupils." The worst part is he catches Oliver before he can pull any of his signature pranks! It's time for Oliver and his best friend, Nathan, to show the new teacher who's boss. But as the weeks go by, they start to realize that Mr. Aidact is not what they expected.
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Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow
Simon O’Keeffe’s biggest claim to fame should be the time his dad accidentally gave a squirrel a holy sacrament. Or maybe the alpaca disaster that went viral on YouTube. But the story the whole world wants to tell about Simon is the one he’d do anything to forget: the story in which he’s the only kid in his class who survived a school shooting.
Two years after the infamous event, twelve-year-old Simon and his family move to the National Quiet Zone the only place in America where the internet is banned. Instead of talking about Simon, the astronomers who flock to the area are busy listening for signs of life in space. And when Simon makes a friend who’s determined to give the scientists what they’re looking for, he’ll finally have the chance to spin a new story for the world to tell.JNonFiction: A nonfiction book is one that tells you facts and information about the world around you. It can cover almost any topic, from wild animals to Vikings. If it's about something that really happened or something that really exists, it is nonfiction.
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Abandon Ship! The True WWII Story About the Sinking of the Laconia by Michael Tougias
On September 12, 1942, the RMS Laconia was attacked by a German submarine five hundred miles off the coast of western Africa. What the Germans didn’t know was that they had just attacked their allies: locked below decks on the British ship were nearly 1,800 Italian prisoners of war. When the Germans realized their mistake, they made the unprecedented decision to rescue all survivors regardless of their nationality, attempting to declare the waters a neutral zone. But when an American bomber flew over the humanitarian effort, he was ordered to drop bombs, contributing to the deaths of many Italian POWs and British civilians in the process. Some of those who remained alive endured weeks adrift at sea, fighting for survival with little water or food, and in shark infested oceans.
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Amazing Animal Journeys: the Most Incredible Migrations in the Natural World by Philippa Forrester
Join animals on as they embark on large scale migrations and travel through the natural world in this book that follows their incredible journeys. Little ones can read all about why animals travel far and wide in Amazing Animal Journeys ; many are in search of food, some are looking for a mate, lots are heading to a warmer climate, and others are just seeking a new home.
This animal book for children aged 7-9 follows the unbelievable mass migrations of entire species with amazing facts and maps that tell the stories of nature’s most amazing journeys. Discover the record-breaking flight of the Arctic Tern, who travels from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back every year, the sharks that follow plankton for enormous distances from the ocean depths to the surface from night to day, or the Monarch butterflies who use Earth’s magnetic field to trace a path along the west coast of North America!Image
In this exciting book, a former NASA astronaut inspires the next generation of space travelers with answers to all kids' questions on how people become astronauts, how they prepare for space travel, and what it's like to live and work in space.
A kid's guide to leaving the planet from someone who's done it! Former astronaut Terry Virts guides readers through the practical elements of becoming an astronaut, along with the wonders (and challenges!) of space travel. With insider information on training, piloting a ship, and working in space, readers and aspiring astronauts will be inspired to start their own journey to the stars. This practical guide is full of valuable wisdom and insight that will guide the astronaut candidates of tomorrow!