Must-Read Kids' Books from NPR

I think I'm suffering from list overload. Most of my Facebook friends are readers, and we love to post lists and check off how many books from each list we've read. Because we're well-read, yo. But I got tired of seeing lists prominently featuring gems like the Twilight series (okay, I actually did read the first book), and my scores were suffering because of this, people!

So when I started seeing links to the Ultimate Backseat Bookshelf: 100 Must-Reads For Kids 9-14, I was like, yeah, right, whatever, and what's up with this BACKSEAT business, anyway? I can't read in the car. I didn't even click. So the list is a couple of days old now (forever in internet time) and I'm just now getting around to looking at it and HOLY COW, this is actually a good list.

The Backseat Book Club is apparently NPR's book club for young readers. To create the list, they did solicit audience nominations, but they also recruited a stellar panel of experts to curate and create the final list. And it's worth perusing, printing, and posting prominently wherever children are to be found. It includes books from the 19th century (Little Women) to present day (Bomb) and a variety of genres/subject areas (American Stories, Animal Kingdom, Biography/Memoir/History, Everyday Magic, Family Life, Fantasy Worlds, Friendships and Finding Your Place, Good For a Laugh, Graphic Novels, Mysteries and Thrillers, Myths and Fairy Tales, Poetry, Science Fiction, Survival and Adventure).

Several of my favorite series are included, although the Betsy-Tacy series is missing, and for some reason only The Saturdays is included from Elizabeth Enright's Melendy Quartet.

For the record, I've read 57 out of 100. And I'm adding at least some of the others to my to-read list.

Kathleen's 2012 in Books

None of us has posted much this year, but we've definitely been reading. My goal was to read at least 100 new-to-me books this year, and I made that easily -- I've read 111, not including re-reads (and I do re-read a good number of books each year; I just don't track them).

So, here are some of my stats from Goodreads:

Books I rated 5 Stars
There are 11 of these, which is more than I thought there were. Toward the end of the year I felt like I was being really picky and hadn't given out five stars for a LONG time. You can click the titles to see my reviews

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Heidi W. Durrow
The Mighty Miss Malone, Christopher Paul Curtis
Ish, Peter H. Reynolds
The Dot, Peter H. Reynolds
A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
Greensleeves, Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Anastasia on Her Own, Lois Lowry
How Girls Can Help Their Country, Juliette Gordon Low
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed
Countdown, Deborah Wiles
The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Rae Carson

Books I rated 3 and 4 Stars
I gave 56 books four stars, and 40 books three stars. You can click the links to see which books.

Books I rated 2 Stars
Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
A Northern Light, Jennifer Donnelly
Little Women and Me, Lauren Baratz-Logsted

One Star and Lower
I didn't give any books one star. In fact, it appears that I've only got two one-star books in my entire Goodreads history. Why? I think I'm at least somewhat picky about what I read. I pick things I know I'll be interested in. But I also tend to put the book down unfinished if I really don't like it. I have only one of those this year - Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad. It just wasn't for me. And I've currently got Les Miserables unfinished and on hold. I plan to see the movie musical, and I'd never read the novel, so I thought I'd read it, but it's been quite a slog. I mean, I can see why it's considered a great story, but it's also a difficult read.

Other stats
Total pages: 32,355
Longest book: 11/22/63, Stephen King, 849 pages
Shortest books: Ish and The Dot at 32 pages each. Okay, I may have read a few more picture books as well. I have a 7-year-old to whom I read aloud. But I don't keep track of all of those books.
Publication dates: 26 of these books were published in 2012. Only 15 of the books I read were originally published in the 20th century. The remainder were published from 2000-2011.

Book formats
I didn't officially track how many paper books vs. e-books I read, but by my count I read 51 of 111 as e-books (most through library loan), and I think the amount of e-book reading I did increased over the course of the year. There are still many books not available through the library's e-book program, but it's gotten better. I don't have a full-size e-reader, but I usually do my bedtime reading on my phone now.

Books I re-read
I don't track the books I re-read, but I can tell you what some of them are. I generally re-read these each year.

The Betsy-Tacy series
The Little House series
The Dark Is Rising Sequence
Louisa May Alcott: Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, An Old-Fashioned Girl, Jack and Jill, Under the Lilacs
The Anne of Green Gables series
Tam Lin, Pamela Dean

I usually re-read several Madeleine L'Engle books (but not always the same ones), and there are many others that I will pull off the shelf and re-read, or read with my girls.

Currently Reading
As we prepare to ring in the new year, I'm reading Stephen King's Under the Dome.

Books I Read in 2010 (Kathleen)

Apparently a lot of people make these lists, and like to see other people's lists. I'm not sure mine is totally accurate. This is based on a combination of my Goodreads list, my e-book history on my phone, and my reading history at the library (my library system will save your check-out history online if you allow it). It only includes books read for the first time in 2010. It may or may not be missing a few books. They are in no order at all, but I did put a star in front of those titles I rated five stars on Goodreads.

Blogger doesn't want to show you the line numbers, so I'll just tell you that there are 102 books on the list.

1. Creepers, Joanne Dahme
2. Tombstone Tea, Joanne Dahme
3. Lompoc: Padres to Pinot, John McReynolds
4. Rock What You've Got: Secrets to Loving Your Inner and Outer Beauty from Someone Who Has Been There and Back, Katherine Schwarzenegger
5. Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1), Paolo Bacigalupi
6. *Lockdown, Walter Dean Myers
7. Dark Water, Laura McNeal
8. Breathless, Jessica Warman
9. A Blue So Dark, Holly Schindler
10. Red Glass, Laura Resau
11. Cookie, Jacqueline Wilson
12. On The Wings of Heroes, Richard Peck
13. The Canning Season, Polly Horvath
14. Bread and Roses, Too, Katherine Paterson
15. The White Darkness, Geraldine McCaughrean
16. The Slave Dancer, Paula Fox
17. Peak, Roland Smith
18. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit
19. One Crazy Summer, Rita Williams-Garcia
20. As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth, Lynne Rae Perkins
21. Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever
22. Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream, William Powers
23. Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy
24. Colors of God, Dave Phillips
25. Makers, Cory Doctorow
26. Peter and the Starcatchers (Peter and the Starcatchers, #1), Dave Barry
27. On the Hill, Lisa Jahn-Clough
28. The Beatles: The Biography, Bob Spitz
29. Starter Vegetable Gardens, Barbara Pleasant
30. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg
31. Ash, Malinda Lo
32. *Frindle, Andrew Clements
33. Gimme Refuge: The Education of a Caretaker, Matt Love
34. Illyria, Elizabeth Hand
35. Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, Shannon Hayes
36. The Clearing, Heather Davis
37. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated, Alison Arngrim
38. The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, Christopher Paul Curtis
39. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Green
40. Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson
41. *Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver
42. Unwind (Unwind, #1), Neal Shusterman
43. Forget-Her-Nots, Amy Brecount White
44. The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Ranch Wife, Ree Drummond
45. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1), Rick Riordan
46. *Cabin Fever: Notes from a Part-Time Pioneer, William L. Sullivan
47. Anastasia Krupnik, Lois Lowry
48. Quaking, Kathryn Erskine
49. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, Kelly O. McNees
50. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman
51. The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, Ben Hewitt
52. *Mockingbird, Kathryn Erskine
53. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seth Grahame-Smith
54. Shadow Tag, Louise Erdrich
55. Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, Bill Buford
56. Love is the Higher Law, David Levithan
57. House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest, Craig Childs
58. Heat, Mike Lupica
59. For The Win, Cory Doctorow
60. Red Inferno: 1945: A Novel, Robert Conroy
61. Bamboo People, Mitali Perkins
62. Anything But Typical, Nora Raleigh Baskin
63. Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, Harriet Reisen
64. Cracked Up to Be, Courtney Summers
65. The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2), Patrick Ness
66. The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1), Patrick Ness
67. The Drifters, James A. Michener
68. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Jacqueline Kelly
69. Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks, Dwight J. Friesen
70. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe
71. Alcott in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates, Daniel Shealy
72. Live Sent: you are a letter, Jason C Dukes
73. Genius of Common Sense, Glenna Lang
74. Jenny Kimura, Betty Cavanna
75. How to Hook a Hottie, Tina Ferraro
76. *Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk
77. The Dead-Tossed Waves (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #2), Carrie Ryan
78. Restoring Harmony, Joelle Anthony
79. Elske (Kingdom, #4), Cynthia Voigt
80. What I Saw And How I Lied, Judy Blundell
81. *When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
82. One True Thing, Anna Quindlen
83. The Glory Cloak: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton, Patricia O'Brien
84. Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, Francine Prose
85. Hungry City, Carolyn Steel
86. Lips Touch: Three Times, Laini Taylor
87. The Sixty-Eight Rooms, Marianne Malone
88. Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne
89. Crunch, Leslie Connor
90. Tin Lizzie, Allan Drummond
91. I Am the Ice Worm, Maryann Easley
92. Sweet Treats & Secret Crushes, Lisa Greenwald
93. Zombies vs. Unicorns, Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier
94. *The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times, Carol Deppe
95. White Sands, Red Menace, Ellen Klages
96. Edges, Léna Roy
97. The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
98. Agnes Grey, Anna Brontë
99. The Abbot's Ghost, Louisa May Alcott
100. The Sleeper Awakes, H.G. Wells
101. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë
102. Origin, J.A. Konrath