Parents Coalition Second Annual Summer Reading List

This year our Montgomery County Public Libraries will be the only ones in the entire State of Maryland not to participate in the Maryland State Department of Education Summer Reading Program. Why? Budget cuts of 24 percent to our libraries. Also unavailable due to budget cuts is access to Academic OneFile, Encyclopedia Americana, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Historical Newspapers Extra Edition, the New Book of Knowledge, the New Book of Popular Science, and on and on. Eighty positions will be lost, on top of the 60 positions already cut in Fiscal Year 2010. Meanwhile the Board of Education has a surplus to run the public school system. Or something.


In lieu of the public libraries being able to provide staffing and books to our children, the PCMC offers as a public service our Second Annual Summer Reading List.

This year I thought about what I had read as a child and then had a brilliant idea: ask my mom what SHE read as a child, to rediscover those old classics. My mom reminds me that was during the Depression, so no one actually bought books. They went to the library. Her local library was the wonderful Duffield Library of the Detroit Public Library System, on West Grand Boulevard.

Somehow even though it was the Depression, the City of Detroit managed to keep their libraries open and staffed and provide books to their youngest citizens. She remembers her favorites being Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), as well as used comic books from the neighborhood grocery store.

Moving to the next generation, friends recommend two books by Howard Pease: Captain of the Araby (1953); and The Ship without a Crew (1934) both featuring the main character, Tod Moran. Pease was born near Stockton, California and his books were based in part on his own adventures around the world. John Billington, Friend of Squanto (1956) by Clyde Robert Bulla is also another book that comes highly recommended.

The younger generation recommends The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster (1961). This is the story of bored Milo who drives through a magic tollbooth. As we are at the height of summer I am sure there are lots of bored boys and girls out there that would like this adventure story.

As last year, if you have a book to recommend to our kids, please post it in the comments here. Enjoy the summer, relax, and read with your children!