October 25, 2017 | strande
If you're looking to pick up a story about family, give one of these a try. Many of them highlight a challenge facing a particular family, or emphasize family connections. All of these titles are also available in audio book formats, which make them uniquely suited to family reading.
While sorting through difficulties in her friendship with her neighbor Margaret, eight-year-old Clementine gains several unique hairstyles while also helping her father in his efforts to banish pigeons from the front of their apartment building.
A young boy in Concord, Massachusetts, who loves superheroes and comes from a long line of brave Chinese farmer-warriors, wants to make friends, but first he must overcome his fear of everything.
After Tacy Kelly moves into the house across the street from Betsy Ray, the five-year-olds become inseparable friends.
Ramona at 7 1/2 sometimes feels discriminated against by being the youngest in the family.
The six mean Herdman kids lie, steal, smoke cigars (even the girls) and then become involved in the community Christmas pageant.
The author writes of her life on the edge of the big woods of Wisconsin.
Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie.
Talkative, ten-year-old Rebecca goes to live with her spinster aunts, one harsh and demanding, the other soft and sentimental, with whom she spends seven difficult but rewarding years growing up.
A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.
Nine-year-old Addy Walker escapes from a cruel life of slavery to freedom during the Civil War.
After spending her life with her mentally handicapped mother and agora phobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is.
Deza Malone, the smartest girl in her class in Gary, Indiana, accompanies her mother and older brother on a trip to find her father, an African American man who left to find work after the Great Depression hit. They end up in a Hooverville outside of Flint, Michigan, and her brother attempts to be a performer while Deza and her mother search for a home.
Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.
Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847. The satisfying rhythms of their lives are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge one winter night, bringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever. Set on an island in Lake Superior and filled with fascinating details of traditional Ojibwa life.
A Swiss orphan must leave her beloved grandfather and happy mountain top home to go to school and to care for an invalid girl in the city.
When Genie and his older brother spend their summer in the country with their grandparents, he learns a secret about his grandfather and what it means to be brave.
Eldest of three sisters in a land where it is considered to be a misfortune, Sophie is resigned to her fate as a hat shop apprentice until a witch turns her into an old woman and she finds herself in the castle of the greatly feared wizard Howl.
When a Swiss couple and their four sons are shipwrecked on an isolated island, they adapt to their "New Switzerland" using many imaginative methods of farming and animal taming.
Relates the adventures of a family with two fathers, four adopted boys, and a variety of pets as they make their way through a school year, Kindergarten through sixth grade, and deal with a grumpy new neighbor. This story doesn't have an audio version available, but it's well worth a look anyway. The second book in the series does have a corresponding book on CD.
Anastasia's 10th year has some good things like falling in love and really getting to know her grandmother and some bad things like finding out about an impending baby brother.
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England.
Meg Murry, her brother Charles, and their friend Calvin, embark on a journey through space and time, assisted by three otherworldly women, when they set out to find Meg's father, a physicist who disappeared while experimenting with time travel.
From basketball dreams and family fiascos to first crushes and new neighborhoods, this anthology, written by award-winning children's authors, celebrates the uniqueness and universality in all of us.
Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert have decided to adopt an orphan. They want a nice sturdy boy to help with the farm chores. The orphanage sends a girl instead. As soon as Anne arrives at the farmhouse called Green Gables, she know she wants to stay forever.
Upon leaving an oppressive summer camp, twelve-year-old Margaret Rose Kane spearheads a campaign to preserve three unique towers her grand uncles have been building in their backyard for over forty year.
Traces the story of the Gilbreth family, whose twelve children were all raised with efficiency methods popularized by their father and continued by their mother.