Summer Reading Roundup
Great books that keep learning alive once school’s out, selected by a school librarian and mom to a child with ADHD.
How can you keep your child from losing ground on learning while school’s out? Entice him with these summertime reading picks. They feature characters with whom kids with ADHD will connect — and employ the right blend of humor and imagination to grab and hold our kids’ attention.
by Jill Wolfson
Henry Holt & Co.; ages 9-12
Purchase this book
“Back when I was five, I got put on a drug called Ritalin because certain foster parents decided that anyone who is a ball of energy like me needs something to calm her down.”
Meet Whitney, “a superfunny, hyper, loudmouthed” sixth-grader, and find out what happens as she moves in with her twelfth foster family. I loved this book. Parents should read it along with their child! It’ll remind them to appreciate their own “ball of energy.”
by Jack Gantos
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; ages 9-12
Purchase this book
“You know me. I always have to have something on my mind or something in my hands. Otherwise, my mind chases off in one direction and my hands go in another.”
Many of our kids do know Joey Pigza, star of Jack Gantos’ popular series. But they’ll see a new side of Joey in the fourth book, I Am Not Joey Pigza. When Joey’s “no good, squinty-eyed, bad dad Carter Pigza” shows up, claiming he’s a new man, he insists that Joey reinvent himself, too!
Do the Pigzas really get a do-over in the family department? And can Joey reclaim his true identity in the end?
Hank Zipzer, The World’s Greatest Underachiever (series)
by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver
Grosset & Dunlap; ages 9-12
Purchase Hank Zipzer: The Life of Me
Don’t ask Hank Zipzer for directions. He doesn’t know right from left. And don’t trust him to make change. He can’t do math in his head.
But if you’re looking for a laugh, Hank is your man. Titles like Barfing in the Backseat: How I Survived My Family Road Trip and characters like an iguana named Katherine guarantee the third- through sixth-grade crowd will gobble up this series like Hank eats pizza. The latest release, The Life of Me (Enter at Your Own Risk), is the fourteenth volume in the series.
Phoebe Flower’s Adventures (series)
by Barbara Roberts
Advantage Books; ages 7-10
Purchase Phoebe’s Best Best Friend
Offer the four books in the Phoebe Flower’s Adventures series for your daughter’s summer reading pleasure. In Phoebe’s Best Best Friend, Phoebe’s ADHD gets her in trouble at school-again-but the story has a happy ending when her mom confides that she had ADHD as a girl. Together they write an essay about Phoebe’s new “best” friend, her mother.
