Books like Charlie Needs a Cloak
By Tomie dePaola
For the kid who wants to know how things are actually made, this follows one cloak from sheep's back to shepherd's shoulders, start to finish. Warm, earthy, and unhurried, with a folk-art charm.
A Black boy growing up in segregated 1940s North Carolina loves to draw everything around him, but becomes a football star instead — until his dream of making art finds its way to him.
A bird gathers everything she needs to build a nest — pulling a worm from the ground, lifting twigs that are just the right size, pushing them into place — until her nest is finally ready and waiting.
A family farm moves through a full year, from spring planting to morning chores to the first cold rains of autumn, following animals, crops, and the people who tend them.
Four small animals — a yellow bird, a white dog, an orange fox, and a brown squirrel — each face a little setback in one day, until something good turns things around for all of them.
While the other field mice work all autumn gathering corn and nuts for winter, a quiet mouse gathers sun rays, colors, and words instead — and when the food runs low, his stories are what feed everyone.
A young left-handed girl picks up her brother's guitar, flips it upside down to play it her own way, and by age eleven has written "Freight Train," a song the world would come to know.
A real-life picture book biography follows young Alma Thomas from a childhood soaking up color in Georgia to becoming a celebrated painter — teaching art for decades before beginning her own boundlessly colorful paintings near age seventy.
A tiny hedgehog named Bean spends her days with Grandma, in ten small stories full of ordinary magic — losing a bad mood in a meadow, giant strawberries, and a ghost that's really just Bean in a sheet.
A biography of jazz pioneer Duke Ellington, tracing his rise from playing pool halls and cabarets as a teenager to leading his orchestra through a groundbreaking Carnegie Hall performance of Black, Brown, and Beige.
A dog named Rocket sits under his favorite tree as a little yellow bird teaches him the alphabet, letter by letter, until sounds turn into words he can read all on his own.
A young girl travels to Paris and then to Giverny, walking through Claude Monet's real flower garden and studying his famous paintings up close to discover how the artist saw the world.
When spring arrives, a little bunny sets out across the countryside searching for a home of his own, asking a groundhog, a robin, and a frog along the way.
