Let's Go! © 2024 by Julie Flett.

I’m not a skateboarder, but it sure looks like fun in Julie Flett’s picture book Let’s Go! (at right). It’s a story about a kid mustering the courage to try something new (using Mom’s childhood skateboard!) and then finding — and helping build — community around shared interest.

That’s our mission too. In the Horn Book’s one hundred years of “blowing the horn” for fine books for young people, our primary focus has been reading enjoyment and our primary audience a dedicated, creative bunch of “children’s literature enthusiasts.” See Five Questions for Sylvie Kantorovitz, author-illustrator of varied graphic-format titles, whose entertaining new early-reader comics encapsulate love of reading and learning to read.

Our annual Summer Reading recommendations are different from our many other themed booklists (Notes from the Horn Book, Book Bundles, and more) in that they’re eclectic by design. When compiling the lists — thirteen selections (a baker’s dozen!) for all age ranges — we seek out page-turning fiction, nonfiction, folklore, and poetry. We approach these lists in the spirit of exploration and curiosity and with the important reminder that “the individual child is the real criterion.” Maybe not every book will be for every reader — but what better time than summer, with its extended out-of-school hours and often less prescriptive schedule, to pick up a potential new favorite?

Print out the handy-dandy PDF version of our Summer Reading booklist, with cover art by Julie Flett from Let’s Go!, and bring it with you as reference to your local library or to any/all of your favorite independent bookstores.

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

From the April 2024 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.