Welcome to the Horn Book’s annual Summer Reading list, this year supersized and coming to you in springtime. (Hi, Earth Day, April 22!) We’ve heard your feedback and are starting a month earlier, with this April issue of Notes debuting our Summer Reading goodies: Five Questions for Kat Fajardo about her graphic novel Miss Quinces (simultaneously published in Spanish) plus annotated book recommendations for all age ranges and including all genres; our handy-dandy, at-a-glance, printable PDF, featuring beautiful cover art from A Day for Sandcastles, is now available below just in time for Independent Bookstore Day!

As always, our summertime list is intended for reading pleasure; if you learn a little something along the way (like Suyapa does in Miss Quinces, about the power of family, tradition, and staying true to yourself; or like the kids in A Day for Sandcastles do about trial and error and the ocean tides; or like I did about Solitary Animals — sometimes summer reading means being left alone!), all the better. We hope you find some new favorites — no strings attached — that will remind you of the summer season and to which you can return all year long.

[A Day for Sandcastles. Story concept copyright © 2022 by JonArno Lawson. Illustrations copyright © 2022 by Qin Leng. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.]

Picture Books | Beginning Readers and Primary Grades
Intermediate | Middle School | High School

From the April 2022 issue of Notes from the Horn Book: Summer Reading. For past years’ summer reading lists from The Horn Book, click on the tag summer reading.