2023
Holiday Book List
Enjoy the holiday season and give the gift of literacy today!
With the holidays around the corner, winter break offers a great opportunity to spend extra time with your children reading excellent books. High-quality books are an integral part of early literacy education. Offering children a balance of fiction and nonfiction reading experiences can provide gorgeous illustrations, compelling text, and opportunities to learn.
Whether you are shopping for a gift or cozying on the couch, check out our Holiday Book Collection for some of this season’s best titles. Share this list with your friends and family and spread the joy of reading this season.
narrated by Jenna Braastad
Infant, Toddler, & Pre-K
Title Spotlight
Together
Mona Damluji and Innosanto Nagara
In Together, social justice kids book pioneer Innosanto Nagara teams up with poet and activist Mona Damluji for a stunningly tender and pitch-perfect visual feast that juxtaposes individual action with the power of people acting together. Each of the ten free-verse couplets in the poem is spread across four pages of imagery, to make a unique and different kind of board book for young kids to discover with their families.
Additional Infant, Toddler, and Pre-K Titles
Give Me a Snickle
Alisha Sevigny
Who Jumps More?
Grace Lin
I Can Be . . . Me!
Lesléa Newman and Maya Christina Gonzalez
Kindergarten and First Grade
Title Spotlight
My Fade Is Fresh
Shauntay Grant and Kitt Thomas
Author Shauntay Grant's sweet, rhyming story encourages young girls to be self-confident and celebrates the many shapes and forms Black hair can take. Through their stunning illustrations, Kitt Thomas is able to bring life and movement to the versatile styles featured in this book.
Additional Kindergarten and First Grade Titles
Come and Join Us!: 18 Holidays Celebrated All Year Long
Liz Kleinrock and Chaaya Prabhat
Vamos! Let’s Go Read
Raul the Third
How to Build an Insect
Roberta Gibson and Anne Lambelet
Make a gift. Empower a child.
Children deserve the opportunity to achieve their dreams, and learning to read is a critical step in that journey. Help us provide Black and Latinx children the high-quality & culturally sustaining literacy instruction they deserve.
Second and Third Grade
Title Spotlight
There Was a Party for Langston
Jason Reynolds, Jerome Pumphrey, and Jarrett Pumphrey
New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds’s debut picture book is a snappy, joyous ode to Word King, literary genius, and glass-ceiling smasher Langston Hughes and the luminaries he inspired.
Additional Second and Third Grade Titles
Wednesday Wilson Gets Down to Business
Bree Galbraith and Morgan Goble
A Land of Books
Duncan Tonatiuh
The Secret Explorers and the Missing Scientist
SJ King
The Me I Choose to Be
Natasha Anastasia Tarpley and Regis and Kahran Bethencourt
Marvelous Mabel
Crystal Hubbard and Alleanna Harris
Fourth and Fifth Grade
Title Spotlight
Frizzy
Claribel A. Ortega and Rose Bousamra
New York Times-bestselling author Claribel A. Ortega and star debut artist Rose Bousamra's Frizzy is about Marlene, a young Dominican girl whose greatest enemy is the hair salon! Through her struggles and triumphs, this heartwarming and gorgeous middle-grade graphic novel shows the radical power of accepting yourself as you are, frizzy curls and all.
Additional Fourth and Fifth Grade Titles
Dungeon Club: Roll Call
Molly Knox Ostertag and Xanthe Bouma
Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler
Ibi Zoboi
Freewater
Amina Luqman-Dawson
Dear Yesteryear
Kimberly Annece Henderson and Ciara LeRoy
The Universe in You: A Microscopic Journey
Jason Chin
Inspired by what you've seen and want to support CLI? Contact a member of our Development Team to learn more about how your philanthropic investment can advance our literacy mission