Anyone who has known me for more about about thirty seconds knows that I love to read. Because I want to share that love of books, all the small people in my life get books for their birthdays (and also for Christmas, if they’re family).

Since I’ve been doing this for more than 18 years at this point, and because I keep track of the books I give (because I don’t want to give the same books to the same families multiple times) I have a pretty substantial list of kids book. So I’m going to be make some recommendations, divided into age groups.

Picture Books: History & Historical Figures
Picture Books: Folklore
Picture Books: Multi-Cultural
Picture Books: Girl Power
Picture Books: Math & Science
Young Readers: More Pictures
Young Readers: Fewer Pictures
Middle Grades
Older Kids
YA Books

Some books will appear on more than one list, because my thought is this. If a kid loves to read, then some YA books are more than appropriate for them, because their reading level is higher than YA. But some YA books contain themes that might not be appropriate for middle age readers (acknowledgement of boinking, primarily), so they belong only in the YA category. It’s up to you to know the kid for whom you’re giving books, to know if acknowledgement of sex is something they’ll be ok with.

This is less a morality thing IMO, than whether the kid will be comfortable with the material. I read James Baldwin in middle school, and I remember being really confused by the idea of two male characters having sex–because I could not for the life of me figure out how that would work, but there is no way I was going to *ask* someone about it.

So, know your kid.

This will be the reference post, with links to the different posts. If you have any questions or would like to make requests or recommendations, PLEASE feel free to do so.

Also, I want to add some classifications to the books, and one of those is for books about non-white characters. I’m currently using the tag Non-WASP, since no one could give me a better term.

If you want to start browsing as I write, I have two existing pages that are somewhat regularly updated:

Kids’ Books
YA Books