Best Children's Fiction on Social Situations

Pete the Cat goes walking down the street wearing his brand-new white shoes. He proceeds to step in a mound of blueberries and then a mud puddle, each incident changing his sneakers to a new hue (the colors never blend). Bright, childlike illustrations show the long-limbed feline regularly altering his footwear but continuing not to watch where he's walking. The moral of the story keep going no matter what happens to you in life may sound like good advice, but it doesn't instill any sense of power in children it just tells them to accept their fate.

Pete the Cat is wearing his favorite shirt—the one with the four totally groovy buttons. Eric is a popular performer, delighting thousands of children and families every year.

Told completely in dialogue, this delicious take on the classic repetitive tale plays out in sly illustrations laced with visual humor— and winks at the reader with a wry irreverence that will have kids of all ages thrilled to be in on the joke. Deliberately understated, with delectable results… Skillful characterizations; though they're simply drawn and have little to say, each animal emerges fully realized. Four pages into this charmer, every kindergartner will know where the bear’s missing hat is — but they’ll never predict the hilarious revenge he takes on the thief. A sly picture book...Young readers and listeners will love being in on the joke, making them appreciate the story's humor even more. The joy of this book lies in figuring out the explicit plot from the implicit details in the pictures, especially a few wordless ones. A coterie of woodland animals is drawn in a minimalistic style and a palette of browns with a splash of red. This is a familiar picture-book formula with a twist, and the minimalist style Klassen employs with both text and art only emphasizes the humor of the situation....While these design choices and the simplicity and pattern of the text would make this a good choice for beginning readers, it would also make an amusing readaloud or a great little readers’ theater piece.

You can discover the answers to these questions and more with The Everything Kids' Easy Science Experiments Book . Using easy-to-find household materials like soda bottles and flashlights, you can build bubbles, create plastic--even make raisins dance! This is the perfect book for a rainy Saturday, a lazy vacation day, or even after school. Tom Robinson teaches high school science and math and has coauthored an online advance placement physics course.

The hysterical #1 New York Times bestseller from Newbery honoree Carl Hiaasen featuring gators, snakes, bats that bite, and reality show hosts gone wild! But the job keeps getting more complicated: Derek Badger insists on using wild animals for his stunts; and Wahoo's acquired a shadow named Tuna—a girl who's sporting a shiner courtesy of her father and needs a place to hide out. “Only in Florida—and in the fiction of its native son Carl Hiaasen—does a dead iguana fall from a palm tree and kill somebody.” — New York Post “ Chomp is a delightful laugh-out-loud sendup of the surreality of TV that will be enjoyed by readers of all ages.” — Los Angeles Times “ Chomp shines in its humorous, subtle tweaks on pop culture. Grown-ups might stop you in an airport and tell you they like the novels, but kids will sit down and write a three-page letter, complete with illustrations. They're sharp and perceptive, and they really love the irreverent point of view in the books. Reality television taps into the same human impulse that makes you slow down on the highway to gawk at a six-car pile-up. Beside Jon Stewart, the best comedy on television is Finding Bigfoot and some of these other reality shows. Poisonous snakes, gators, crocs, iguanas, black widow spiders, all that stuff. In Chomp, both Mickey and Wahoo are fearless when it comes to snakes and other wild beasts (and nutty people, for that matter)--do you have any animal phobias? A. I just thought it would be cool to name a boy after Wahoo McDaniel, who played for the Dolphins when I was a kid. And the reality, sadly, is that some kids go home every night wondering if their mother or father is going to hurt them. In Scat I had a character whose dad comes back very badly injured from Iraq. You clearly have the single word title thing going for your kids’ books, is that just something you started with and stuck to, or is there more to the story? I have a son in middle school (and also grandchildren), and none of them are ready to read the Big Person novels yet. A. I was at a book-signing in Boulder, Colorado, when a very nice woman told me she'd named her cancerous tumor after a character in one of my novels.

The beloved first book of the Harry Potter series, now fully illustrated by award-winning artist Jim Kay. Much like Roald Dahl, J. K. Rowling has a gift for keeping the emotions, fears, and triumphs of her characters on a human scale, even while the supernatural is popping out all over. Like Harry Potter, [J. K. Rowling] has wizardry inside, and has soared beyond her modest Muggle surroundings to achieve something quite special." *"Readers are in for a delightful romp with this award-winning debut from a British author who dances in the footsteps of P. L. Travers and Roald Dahl. Rowling leaves the door wide open for a sequel; bedazzled readers will surely clamor for one."

When her great-great-aunt Rose (Rosie the Riveter) comes for a visit and mentions her one unfinished goal--to fly--Rosie sets to work building a contraption to make her aunt's dream come true. But when Great-Great Aunt Rose shows up for an extended stay sporting a red polka-dotted scarf à la Rosie the Riveter, she regales her niece with stories of her experiences building airplanes during World War II. She wistfully declares, “The only thrill left on my list is to fly!/But time never lingers as long as it seems./I'll chalk that one up to an old lady's dreams.” This is an itch that Rosie has to scratch, so she sets about designing a unique contraption to help her aunt take to the skies.

Over 6 million people have read the #1 New York Times bestseller WONDER and have fallen in love with Auggie Pullman, an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face. "Wonder is the best kids' book of the year," said Emily Bazelon, senior editor at Slate.com and author of Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy . More than that, Wonder touches the heart in the most life-affirming, unexpected ways, delivering in August Pullman a character whom readers will remember forever. Entertainment Weekly: "In a wonder of a debut, Palacio has written a crackling page-turner filled with characters you can't help but root for." The New York Times: "Rich and memorable...It's Auggie and the rest of the children who are the real heart of 'Wonder,' and Palacio captures the voices of girls and boys, fifth graders and teenagers, with equal skill." The Wall Street Journal : "What makes R.J. Palacio's debut novel so remarkable, and so lovely, is the uncommon generosity with which she tells Auggie's story…The result is a beautiful, funny and sometimes sob-making story of quiet transformation.”. - Patricia Reilly Giff , two-time Newbery honor-winning author of Lily's Crossing and Pictures of Hollis Woods. Starred Review, Publishers Weekly : “Few first novels pack more of a punch: it's a rare story with the power to open eyes--and hearts--to what it's like to be singled out for a difference you can't control, when all you want is to be just another face in the crowd.” Starred Review, Booklist : “Palacio makes it feel not only effortless but downright graceful, and by the stand-up-and-cheer conclusion, readers will be doing just that, and feeling as if they are part of this troubled but ultimately warm-hearted community.”. Starred Review, School Library Journal : "Palacio has an exceptional knack for writing realistic conversation and describing the thoughts and emotions of the characters...A well-written, thought-provoking book. ".

Over 6 million people have read the #1 New York Times bestseller WONDER and have fallen in love with Auggie Pullman, an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face. "Wonder is the best kids' book of the year," said Emily Bazelon, senior editor at Slate.com and author of Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy . More than that, Wonder touches the heart in the most life-affirming, unexpected ways, delivering in August Pullman a character whom readers will remember forever. Entertainment Weekly: "In a wonder of a debut, Palacio has written a crackling page-turner filled with characters you can't help but root for." The New York Times: "Rich and memorable...It's Auggie and the rest of the children who are the real heart of 'Wonder,' and Palacio captures the voices of girls and boys, fifth graders and teenagers, with equal skill." The Wall Street Journal : "What makes R.J. Palacio's debut novel so remarkable, and so lovely, is the uncommon generosity with which she tells Auggie's story…The result is a beautiful, funny and sometimes sob-making story of quiet transformation.”. - Patricia Reilly Giff , two-time Newbery honor-winning author of Lily's Crossing and Pictures of Hollis Woods. Starred Review, Publishers Weekly : “Few first novels pack more of a punch: it's a rare story with the power to open eyes--and hearts--to what it's like to be singled out for a difference you can't control, when all you want is to be just another face in the crowd.” Starred Review, Booklist : “Palacio makes it feel not only effortless but downright graceful, and by the stand-up-and-cheer conclusion, readers will be doing just that, and feeling as if they are part of this troubled but ultimately warm-hearted community.”. Starred Review, School Library Journal : "Palacio has an exceptional knack for writing realistic conversation and describing the thoughts and emotions of the characters...A well-written, thought-provoking book. ".