Best books to get kids into reading

Bud, Not Buddy is the story of 10-year-old orphan Bud Calloway finding his family in the Great Depression. Bud runs away from abusive foster parents, tries and fails to ride the rails, and walks for miles and miles to get to Grand Rapids, where he believes his father lives.

In this live-action film based on the favorite children's tale, the trouble-making Cat in the Hat (Mike Myers) arrives at the home of bored young Sally Walden (Dakota Fanning) and her brother, Conrad (Spencer Breslin), while their mother (Kelly Preston) is out. The family's pet fish (Sean Hayes) objects to the Cat's presence, but that doesn't stop the hat-wearing giant feline from trying to have fun, no matter how much destruction is left in his wake.

After learning that a young pig's days are numbered, a literate spider weaves an elaborate plan to save her friend from the butcher's block.

Middle school is not an enjoyable experience for preteen Greg Heffley but a horrid ordeal of social land-mines that he must bear. To do so, he devises schemes to win him the recognition and status he feels he deserves -- all of which fail miserably. Greg chronicles his misadventures, thoughts, and opinions in a diary to prepare for the day that he will no longer have to put up with nonsense.

The book recounts the adventures of Stanley Lambchop after he is squashed flat by a bulletin board while sleeping. However, he survives and decides to make the best of being flat. Soon, he discovers that he is able to enter locked rooms by sliding under the door.

An African-American girl named Sophie shares a brownstone with her parents and her wheelchair-bound grandfather, “who lives by the window.” He’s always there to wave goodbye as she boards the school bus, and he’s waiting to play a special game of hide-and-seek when she returns: Grandpa pretends to have lost an object, and intrepid Sophie locates each one, hidden in plain sight.

Seventh-grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade.

Ramsey and his grandmother embark on a great adventure. They hope to buy an octopus to make octopus stew for dinner. When the octopus comes alive and grows to immense proportions, the story erupts into something more.

The Garden and Down in the Dirt, Kate Messner, and Christopher Silas Neal bring to life a secret underwater world. You will discover the plants and animals that make up the rich, interconnected ecosystem of a mountain pond. Over the pond, the water is a mirror, reflecting the sky. But under the pond is a hidden world of minnows darting, beavers diving, tadpoles growing. These and many other secrets are waiting to be discovered…over and under the pond.

Charlie Bucket lives on the outskirts of town with his poverty-stricken family: his parents and all four grandparents. Each day on his way to school, Charlie passes the best and biggest chocolate factory in the world, run by the secretive Willy Wonka. When Charlie's father loses his job, things go from bad to worse.

The story is centered on a 16-year-old girl, Katniss Everdeen, and her struggle for survival in dystopia. Each year, as a punishment for the failed rebellion by District 13, the 12 Panem Districts are forced to pay tribute to the ruthless Capitol regime. The story begins on the day of reaping at District 12.

Peter wakes up to the season’s first snowfall. In his bright red snowsuit, he goes outside and makes footprints and trails through the snow. Peter is too young to join a snowball fight with older kids, so he makes a snowman and snow angels and slides down a hill. He returns home with a snowball stashed in his pocket. Before he goes to bed, Peter is sad to discover the snowball has melted. The next day, he wakes up to tons more falling snow. With a friend, he ventures outside again.

A small caterpillar emerges from an egg and begins eating everything in sight. Finally, it is no longer hungry and no longer small. The big, fat caterpillar builds a cocoon around himself and finally emerges as a beautiful butterfly. In fact, what Carle calls the cocoon is really the pupa or chrysalis.

August or "Auggie" Pullman, a ten-year-old boy living in New York City, was born with a facial deformity that has made it difficult for him to make friends. He lives with his parents, his older sister Via, and his dog Daisy. He has been homeschooled up until the fifth grade, but his parents have decided that it is time for him to go to a real school.

In this full, bright, and beautiful picture book, many different perspectives around the world are deftly and empathetically explored—from a pair of bird-watchers to the pigeons they’re feeding. Young readers will be drawn into the luminous illustrations inviting them to engage with the world in a new way and see how everyone is connected, and that everyone matters.