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Arts & Entertainment

Library Picks: Books For Going Back to School

Baldwin librarians recommend books by Mo Willems and Audrey Vernick.

Going back to school means hitting the books, so how about you help them get prepared? Youth libriarians from shared their picks for books to help get your kids ready for the classroom.

Picture books

Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten? by Aubrey Vernick

From author Vernick and illustrator Daniel Jennewein comes this hilarious and heartwarming look at first-day-of-school jitters.

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Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya

This is the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears retold in a musical combination of English and Spanish, illustrated with great humor and heart by a Caldecott-winning artist, and featuring a surprise ending that is downright fabuloso. Just right for bilingual families, new Spanish speakers and anyone who likes a bueno twist on a classic.

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Beginning reader

I Broke My Trunk! (Elephant and Piggy Adventure) by Mo Willems

Gerald is careful. Piggie is now. Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can. Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to. Gerald and Piggie are best friends. In I Broke My Trunk!, Gerald tells Piggie the long, crazy story about breaking his trunk. Will Piggie end up with a long, crazy story of her own?

Youth fiction

The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens

Kate, Michael and Emma have been in one orphanage after another for the last 10 years, passed along with lost baggage. Yet these unwanted children are more remarkable than they could possibly imagine. Ripped from their parents as babies, they are being protected from a horrible evil of devastating power, an evil they know nothing about. Until now. Before long, Kate, Michael and Emma are on a journey to dangerous and secret corners of the world ... a journey of allies and enemies, of magic and mayhem.

Troublemaker by Andrew Clements

When his big brother, Mitchell, gets in some serious trouble, Clay decides to change his own michief-making ways — but he can't seem to shake his reputation as a troublemaker. From the master of the school story comes a book about the fine line between good-humored mischief and dangerous behavior and how everyday choices can close or open doors.

To check out any of these books or movies, visit the library's website and reserve your copy straight from the online catalogue. Make sure you come back to Birmingham Patch next week, to see what else is new in the stacks.

For more Back to School coverage, check out Birmingham Patch's Back to School Guide 2011.

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