Smith Library Bluebonnet Book Club

Explores the history of Negro League baseball teams, discussing owners, players, hardships, wins, and losses; and including illustrations.

Brainy Scott, a great kicker who otherwise struggles with football, and star quarterback Chris, who has dyslexia, team up to help each other succeed in both football and school.

While continuing to help his classmates solve their problems, Humphrey, pet hamster of Longfellow School’s Room 26, faces many surprises, like rolling in a hamster ball, a substitute janitor who might be an alien, and the possibility of Mrs. Brisbane retiring.

Click here to open a scrambled word search about Humphrey, scrambled train cars, a word ladder, Dr. Drew’s Hamster Care Quiz, Who Am I Rhyming Game, Magic Mitch’s Disappearing Coin Trick, Humphrey’s Hilarious Ha-Has, and you can send a Humphrey card to a friend if you know their e-mail address.

From her home in Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in 1942, eleven-year-old Milada is taken with other blond, blue-eyed children to a school in Poland to be trained as “proper Germans” for adoption by German families, but all the while she remembers her true name and history.

Recounts the adventures of Mibs Beaumont, whose thirteenth birthday has revealed her “savvy”–a magical power unique to each member of her family–just as her father is injured in a terrible accident.

You can read the first chapter of Savvy.

Piper is sad about leaving her home and friends behind when her father, a Navy aircraft mechanic, is transferred yet again, but with help from her often-annoying sisters and a surprise from their parents, she finds happiness in their new home in Pensacola, Florida.

You can listen to an excerpt of the book Piper Reed: Navy Brat.

The four Penderwick sisters are faced with the unimaginable prospect of their widowed father dating, and they hatch a plot to stop him.

Mr. and Mrs. Peabody invite a guest to dinner, but Maybelle the cockroach, who lives under their refrigerator, ignores the warnings of Henry the flea to be sensible and ends up “splashing” into a big adventure.

You can listen to an excerpt of the book Maybelle in the Soup
.

After glimpsing a hint of his destiny in a mysterious tapestry, twelve-year-old Max McDaniels becomes a student at Rowan Academy where he trains in “mystics and combat” in preparation for war with an ancient enemy that has been kidnapping children like him

Twelve-year-old Gil Goodson competes against thousands of other children at extraordinary puzzles, stunts, and more in hopes of a fresh start for his family, which has been ostracized since his father was falsely accused of embezzling money from Golly Toy and Game Company.

A young boy in Concord, Massachusetts, who loves superheroes and comes from a long line of brave Chinese farmer-warriors, wants to make friends, but first he must overcome his fear of everything.

A young boy in Concord, Massachusetts, who loves superheroes and comes from a long line of brave Chinese farmer-warriors, wants to make friends, but first he must overcome his fear of everything.

In a series of poems, Diana writes about her life, both before and after her father loses his job and she and her family move far away to live with Grandpa Joe.

A young American girl’s picky eating habits transform a small worm into the famous Loch Ness monster.

You can go to Michael Austin’s website to see some more of the great illustrations he has made.

In this humorous reading of a Cuban folktale, a cockroach interviews her suitors in order to decide whom to marry.

Dogs across the United States write to Mr. Mutt, a people expert, for help with their humans

From blueberries to vanilla, foods of the Americas are celebrated in this collection of haiku, which also includes information about each food’s origins.

Nic Bishop takes a nifty look at frogs. Physical characteristics, diet, reproduction, and the development of egg to tadpole to froglet are included in the words and shown through gorgeous photos.

Recounts the true story of Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk living in New York City who has become one of the city’s most-watched celebrities and bird watchers, tourists, and residents admire the bird and his nest, built on a Fifth Avenue apartment building.

This biography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth proves President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote about his oldest child: “I can be president of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.” Follow Alice sneaking out at night; riding trays down the White House stairs; or diving, fully clothed, into a ship’s pool.

This fictional story includes the voices of people who assisted in the design, building, financing, and transport of the Statue of Liberty from France to New York in the late nineteenth century. These include the French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, the American newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the poet Emma Lazarus, and Florence de Foreest, a ten-year-old New Jersey girl who donated her two roosters to the fundraising efforts.