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Have You Tried These Picture Books? Summer 2026 |
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Picture Books & Beginning Readers
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Lena the Chicken (But Really a Dinosaur!)
by Linda Bailey
Lena lives in a chicken coop, and she looks a lot like a chicken. But deep down, she's convinced that she's a--DINOSAUR! She can feel it in her bones. Lena just doesn't understand the scaredy chickens in her family, and they don't understand her either, with her ferociousness and big ideas. The people on the farm are also baffled, except for little Madeline, who thinks Lena has personality. And then, when a dastardly weasel turns up and threatens the coop, Lena's fearful family chickens out again. It's up to Lena to unleash her inner dinosaur like never before--to save the coop and show this silly bunch of chickens how to stand up for themselves!
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Aggie and the Ghost
by Matthew Forsythe
Aggie is very excited to live on her own--until she finds out her new house is haunted. But no fear, the situation is nothing that can't be fixed with a carefully considered list of rules: No haunting after dark. No stealing socks. No eating all the food. But the ghost doesn't like playing by the rules and challenges Aggie to an epic game of tic-tac-toe--winner gets the house.
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Balloon
by Bruce Handy
When a young boy accidentally lets go of his orange balloon, he begins to see round, orange objects everywhere, including an unexpected one he gets to take home.
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Fireworks
by Matthew Burgess
POP! As a hot day sizzles into evening, everyone on stoops and sidewalks looks skyward on this special summer night--the Fourth of July! Words and art blossom into flowers of fire across the sky, making this a perfect read for firework enthusiasts in cities and suburbs everywhere. POP! POP!
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Everybelly
by Thao Lam
Maddie and her mom spend a sunny day at the local public pool where she meets and greets friends and neighbors. Maddie is waist-high on most of them, and she knows there's an interesting person behind every belly she passes.
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Cat Nap
by Brian Lies
In the warm, late afternoon sunlight, a girl sits on the couch reading a book. Her kitten dozes nearby. But when Kitten notices a mouse and dives after it through a framed poster on the wall, an epic chase through time, art, and history ensues. Is it a dream? That's up to the reader to decide, but for the kitten, every leap and bound is full of suspense and makes for a masterpiece.
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Popo the Xolo
by Paloma Angelina Lopez
Nana transitions from life to death through the nine levels of Mictlåan, accompanied by her beloved xoloitzcuintle, Popo.
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Sundust
by Zeke Peña
A look at the author's hometown of El Paso, where the sun reigns over the vast desert and shapes all that it touches.
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The Library in the Woods
by Calvin Alexander Ramsey
When Junior moves to Roxboro, North Carolina, in 1959, new friends bring him to an incredible place: the Negro Library.
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Moon Song
by Michaela Goade
A young Tlingit girl comforts her cousin, who is afraid of the dark, by singing a song of moonlight and the ocean.
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Don't Trust Fish
by Neil Sharpson
A supposed nature guide humorously warns readers why they should never trust fish, exploring their mysterious and villainous nature.
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Raven's Ribbons
by Tasha Spillett
A boy shares his dream of wearing a traditional ribbon skirt to the community's round dance with his grandmother.
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We Are the Scrappy Ones
by Rebekah Taussig
Children with disabilities celebrate all bodies and minds in this anthem of self-affirmation and belonging.
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100 Goats and Granny!
by Atinuke
Excitement is in the air as Granny collects more and more goats! Eight are great, fifty are nifty ... but when their number reaches one hundred, things start to get out of hand. There's a brown goat beeping on the bus, a gray one sitting in the salon, a white goat stealing panties from the line, and one has gone missing altogether--who can count in all this mayhem?
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A Place for Us
by James E. Ransome
A wordless picture book about a day in the life of a houseless little boy and his mom whose home is wherever they can find one, as long as they are together.
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Earl & Worm #1: The Bad Idea and Other Stories
by Greg Pizzoli
Earl, a cheerful bird who loves playing saxophone, and Worm, a quiet bookworm, overcome their differences with lemonade, creativity, and sharing their stories, becoming the best of friends.
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Pickle on Wheels
by Sylvie Kantorovitz
Pickle wants roller skates, just like Superdog, but learning to skate is harder than it looks!
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ER Nonfiction and Picture Book Nonfiction
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A Gift of Dust: How Saharan Plumes Feed the Planet
by Martha Brockenbrough
An ancient catfish becomes a fossil, and as the lake where it lived dries up, the fossil turns to dust--but this isn't ordinary dust. This dust begins in Chad, West Africa, but winds carry it across the continent, over the Atlantic Ocean, to nourish and replenish the Amazon rain forest and beyond. A Gift of Dust takes readers on a journey that shows just how interconnected our planet is, and how something so small can have such a huge impact.
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In the World of Whales
by Michelle Cusolito
A free diver witnesses the birth of a sperm whale and experiences a moment of connection with the pod.
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The Keeper of Stories
by Caroline Kusin Pritchard
When a fire breaks out at the Jewish Theological Seminary library, helping hands from across the community rally together to save the books and preserve the stories within the pages. Includes factual backmatter on the Jewish Theological Seminary fire of 1966.
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So Many Years: A Juneteenth Story
by Anne Wynter
A poetic picture book explains the history behind Juneteenth celebrations, simultaneously acknowledging the history of slavery in the U.S. as well as the astonishing Black resilience that has led to an enduring legacy of Black joy.
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Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem: Dressmaker and Poet, Myra Viola Wilds
by Nancy Johnson James
What dreams do you carry? Myra Viola Wilds dreamed of opportunity. She left her home in rural Kentucky for the city, learned to read and to write, and became a dressmaker. She hand-stitched gorgeous gowns. She worked so hard she lost her eyesight, and her world went dark. But those well-loved stitches turned into words, and one night Myra woke in the middle of the night and wrote a poem she called 'Sunshine.' She kept writing. She wrote the lush green, sweet-corn yellow, cerulean blue, sunshine-y world from memory, collecting her poems into a book called Thoughts of Idle Hours, published in 1915. This lyrical, gorgeously illustrated picture book biography celebrates this little-known poet and includes a biography that provides context to her life--the Great Migration, Jim Crow segregation--as well a photograph and a small selection of her poems.
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