Skip to main content

Display: Books with Great Mothers

In honor of Mother's Day last Sunday, here is a display of children's books that have great mother characters.



By Louisa May Alcott
Signet Classic, 1868. Fiction. 456 p.
The lives and adventures of the four March sisters--Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy--are set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century New England while their father is off fighting in the Civil War.

By Wilson Rawls
Doubleday, 1960. Fiction. 212
Set against the background of the Ozark Mountains, this is the story of a young farm boy and how he trains his two coon hounds to achieve fame for their hunting and trapping.

By Sydney Taylor
Dell, 1989. Fiction. 188 p.
Five sisters growing up in a Jewish family in New York in the early twentieth century search for hidden buttons while dusting Mama's front parlor, or explore the basement warehouse of Papa's peddler's shop on rainy days. The five girls enjoy doing everything together, especially when it involves holidays and surprises. But no one could have prepared them for the biggest surprise of all!

By Madeleine L’Engle
Farrar Straus Giroux, 1962. Newbery. 262p.
Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government.

By Jeanette Winterson
Bloomsbury, 2009. Fiction. 387 p.
A magus kidnaps a boy named Jack to help him turn London into a city of gold, but Jack instead embarks on a magical adventure to save the city, release a dragon and set free seven other kidnapped boys.


By J. K. Rowling
A.A. Levine Books, 1998. Fiction. 309 p.
Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches.

By Patricia MacLachlan
Harper & Row, 1985. Newbery. 58 p.
When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.

By Jack Gantos
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998. Fiction. 176 p.
To the constant disappointment of his mother and his teachers, Joey has trouble paying attention or controlling his mood swings when his prescription meds wear off and he starts getting worked up and acting wired.

By Beverly Cleary
Harper Trophy, 2006. Fiction. 190 p.
Ramona at 7 1/2 sometimes feels discriminated against by being the youngest in the family.

By Laura Ingalls Wilder
Harper, 1953. Fiction. 237 p.
A year in the life of two young girls growing up on the Wisconsin frontier, as they help their mother with the daily chores, enjoy their father's stories and singing, and share special occasions when they get together with relatives or neighbors.
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

Review: The Amazing Generation

The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World Written by Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price  Illustrated by Cynthia Yuan Cheng New York: Rocky Pond Books, 2025. Informational. 226 pages.  In a kid-friendly adaptation of his best-selling book, The Anxious Generation , Jonathan Haidt teams up with Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone , to bring the power of good information directly to the hands of those that this issue affects most directly — kids on the cusp of getting their own smartphones. The book presents information about the drawbacks of having a smartphone and social media too soon in clear and easy-to-understand language, with eye-catching graphics and pop-outs. Throughout the book, quotes from real teens and young adults, called screen "rebels" by the authors, emphasize the points the authors are trying to make. Fictional characters are featured throughout in a graphic novel story, which further emphasizes the po...