From summer, to fall, to winter, to spring, the seasons are relatively predictable and bring with them new and exciting activities in which to participate. Animals and humans alike adapt to weather changes as temperatures grow colder or warmer. The books in this list include information about the seasons from various perspectives, including the changes animals make over the course of a year and why seasons happen at all. Activities are also included to help readers understand seasons first-hand.
Contributed by: Mary Lanni
Seasons of the Year By: Tracey Steffora This title looks at the annual cycle of seasons and how some plants, animals, and people respond to the changes. |
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Secrets of the Seasons: Orbiting the Sun in Our Backyard By: Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld Illustrated by: Priscilla Lamont Over the course of a year, a family learns about the sun’s role in the changing seasons. |
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A Tree for All Seasons By: Maryse Guittet Explores the changes to a tree and its foliage as the seasons progress. The text is in the shape of a tree. |
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Weather and the Seasons By: DK Introduces weather and the seasons, describing what is a cloud, why rainbows form, and how animals migrate for the winter. This book also includes four weather-related science projects. |
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A Year in the City By: Christina Mia Gardeski From snowplows to skyscraper nests and rooftop gardens, life in the city changes from season to season. Discover what animals live in the city. Learn how smog forms in summer. Real-life photographs follow the seasons and capture the beauty of a year in the city. |
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A Year in the Forest By: Christina Mia Gardeski From hibernation to baby animals and falling leaves, life in the forest changes from season to season. Discover why snow is good for trees. Learn how wildfires help the forest grow. Real-life photographs follow the seasons and capture the beauty of a year in the forest. |
No classroom settings here! Enjoy these middle grade books focused on sun and June, July, and August. Recommended towards ages 8-12.
Finding Someplace By: Denise Lewis Patrick The weekend she turns thirteen, aspiring clothing designer Teresa “Reesie” Boone is separated from her family by Hurricane Katrina but, during the horrific storm and its aftermath, begins to find strength in herself. |
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One Crazy Summer By: Rita Williams-Garcia In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp. |
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The Storm Keeper’s Island By: Catherine Doyle Fionn Boyle, terrified of the sea, must spend the summer with this older sister, Tara, and their grandfather on Arranmore, an island that has been known to make people disappear, and seems to be restless again. |
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Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel By: Diana Lopez It’s the summer before eighth grade, and Erica “Chia” Montenegro is feeling so many things that she needs a mood ring to keep track of her emotions. She’s happy when she hangs out with her best friends, jealous that her genius little sister skipped a grade, and passionate about the crushes on her Boyfriend Wish List. But when her mom is diagnosed with breast cancer, Erica feels worried and helpless. |
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Shouting at the Rain By: Lynda Mullaly Hunt Delsie loves a good storm – except when the squalls are in her own life. Her summer friend, Brandy, is back on the Cape at last—but devastates her by dumping her for a new friend. And she could really use a mom right now – except hers left years ago and her loving Grammy won’t discuss her mom, saying it’s too painful. So, when she meets snarky Ronan, supposedly a liar and a thief, Delsie wonders if he’s another storm on the horizon. Turns out he’s caring and courageous – a fisherman’s son who’d rather protect sea life than eat it. But she recognizes something else, too. He is lonely, just like she is. As they traipse around the island, they uncover deep neighborhood secrets, stand up to cruelty and get into both good and bad trouble. But they also open up to each other and tackle complicated stuff like what it means to be angry versus sad, broken versus whole, and abandoned versus loved. |
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Summer of a Thousand Pies By: Margaret Dilloway After her father goes to jail, Cady Bennett, twelve, is taken from foster care to spend a summer with her estranged Aunt Michelle, trying to save her failing pie shop. |
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As Brave as You By: Jason Reynolds Genie’s summer is full of surprises. The first is that he and his big brother, Ernie, are leaving Brooklyn for the very first time to spend the summer with their grandparents all the way in Virginia—in the COUNTRY! The second surprise comes when Genie figures out that their grandfather is blind. |
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Lindsay’s Joyride By: Molly Hurford Lindsay can’t wait to spend her summer break reading comics and watching superhero movies–until she finds out she’ll be moving in with her weird older cousin Phoebe instead. And Phoebe has big plans for Lindsay: a BMX class at her bike park with cool-girl Jen and perfectionist Ali. Lindsay’s summer of learning awesome BMX tricks with new friends and a new bike turns out to be more epic than any comic book–and it’s all leading up to a jumping competition. But some of the biker boys don’t think girls should be allowed to compete in BMX. Now it’s up to Lindsay, Jen, and Ali to win the competition and prove that anyone can be great at BMX. |
Our teen summer reading list includes essential summer settings. Recommended towards ages 13 and up.
Camp So-and-So By: Mary McCoy Twenty-five girls are invited to attend the mysterious Camp So-and-So over the summer where they work with their cabin mates to compete in the All-Camp Sports 7 Follies. |
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Girls of July By: Alex Flinn Told from separate perspectives, four girls, Britta, Meredith, Kate, and Spider, only two of whom had met before, spend an unforgettable July with Spider’s aunt in the Adirondacks. |
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Girl Out of Water By: Laura Silverman When her aunt gets into a car accident, Anise is forced to leave her friends and surfing behind to spend the summer in Nebraska to help care for her cousins, and by doing so, forms familial bonds and new friendships that challenge her feelings of abandonment by her mother. |
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Happy Messy Scary Love By: Leah Konen Olivia plans to spend her summer in the Catskills, binge-watching horror movies and chatting with her online friend Elm. But, things get complicated when she sends Elm her best friend’s picture, and she runs into the last person she thought she would ever see in real life. |
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Harlem Summer By: Walter Dean Myers In 1920s Harlem, sixteen-year-old Mark Purvis, an aspiring jazz saxophonist, gets a summer job as an errand boy for the publishers of the groundbreaking African American magazine, “The Crisis,” but soon finds himself on the enemy list of mobster Dutch Shultz. |
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In a Perfect World By: Trish Doller When her mother has the chance to establish an eye clinic for the poor in Cairo, Egypt, seventeen-year-old Caroline reluctantly gives up her plans for a summer spent with her best friend and boyfriend and instead moves to Cairo, where she encounters a culture and city that enchants her and a charming boy who challenges her thoughts on love, faith, and privilege. |
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We Were Beautiful By: Heather Hepler Fifteen-year-old Mia’s scarred face is a constant reminder of the car crash that killed her sister, but a summer at her grandmother’s Manhattan apartment and new friends help her find happiness again. |
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We Were Liars By: E. Lockhart Spending summers on her family’s private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer. |
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When Dimple Met Rishi By: Sandhya Menon When Dimple Shah and Rishi Patel meet at a Stanford University summer program, Dimple is avoiding her parents’ obsession with “marriage prospects,” but Rishi hopes to woo her into accepting an arranged marriage with him. |