2022


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

Image
I’m Hungry / Tengo hambre!
Angela Dominguez

A bilingual picture book that’s sweet enough to eat about a chatty bluebird and an indecisive T. Rex who can’t decide what his next meal should be, introducing readers to basic Spanish and English food vocabulary. 

Additional Infant, Toddler, and Pre-K Titles

I Belong / Yo pertenezco 

Cheri J. Meiners and Penny Weber

Big Box for Ben

Deborah Bruss and Tomek Bogacki

Ready for Weather
Sarah Jones
I Love You Because I Love You
Muon Thi Van and Jessica Love
Ten Blocks to the Big Wok
Ying-Hwa Hu

Kindergarten and First Grade

Title Spotlight

Image
Shhh! The Baby’s Asleep
JaNay Brown-Wood and Elissambura
Baby is finally asleep. But everyone is much too loud! Can Mom, Daddy, Grammy, Pop Pop, Shae, Dante, Rover the dog, and even the neighbor keep quiet? Just when they think they can rest—oh no. The baby's awake. One savvy little narrator knows just the way to make his baby sister fall back asleep: by reading her a good book!

Additional Kindergarten and First Grade Titles

True You: A Gender Journey
Gwen Agna and Shelley Rotner
Climb On!

Baptiste Paul and Jacqueline Alcántara

Dessert Island
Ben Zhu
The Little Blue Bridge
Brenda Maier and Sonia Sánchez
Still This Love Goes On
Buffy Sainte-Marie and Julie Flett

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

Image
Kapaemahu
Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, and Daniel Sousa
An Indigenous legend about how four extraordinary individuals of dual male and female spirit, or Mahu, brought healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii, based on the Academy Award–contending short film.

Additional Second and Third Grade Titles

El mundo era nuestro
Jacqueline Woodson and Leo Espinosa
The Witch’s Apprentice
Zetta Elliott
Ways to Share Joy
Renee Watson
The Floating Field
Scott Riley, Nguyen Quang, and Kim Lien
The Legend of Gravity
Charly Palmer

Fourth and Fifth Grade

Title Spotlight

Image
The Colors We Share
Angélica Dass

By depicting people from all over the world against a background that matches their skin tone, Angélica Dass shows us how wonderfully colorful humans really are, questioning the concept of race and the limited categories we use to describe each other.  Through a playful and dynamic layout, The Colors We Share encourages looking, questioning, and thinking bigger―inviting us to think about race, and our common humanity, in a new way.

Additional Fourth and Fifth Grade Titles

H Is for Harlem
Dinah Johnson and April Harrison
Too Bright to See
Kyle Lukoff

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