Gift Guide: Children's books
Image: James Ransom
1. Nine-year old Willis Wilbur determines to create the first ever life-coaching app as a school project with friends. Unfortunately, the precocious fourth grader doesn't know how to code and must get over his pride and jealousy to ask for help. Willis Wilbur Meets His Match by Lindsey Leavitt is a middle grade novel. (Penguin Random House, hardcover, 224 pp.) $13.99
2. The popular subscription service Bookroo, founded and run by three young moms, curates titles that are tailored to the young reader--board books, picture books, junior chapter books, and middle grade books--delivered as a "book club box" with multiple titles inside. Additional content opens the digital door to quizzes, rewards, author/artist bios, and book recommendations. (bookroo.com) subscriptions of one month to one year, starting at $19.95
3. Dustin Hansen's ingenious book for teenagers, The Greatest Stories Ever Played: Video Games and the Evolution of Storytelling, takes the most memorable experiences in story-based gaming and examines what makes their narratives so powerful. (Feiwel & Friends, hardcover, 304 pp.) $19.95
4. With weekly Come, Follow Me lessons for children, artist Annie Poon provides coloring pages, word games, puzzles, and art activities--including a paper theater diorama of Jesus visiting Paul in prison--in Color Your Way Through the New Testament in her own inimitable style that somehow mixes the sacred and the funny. (Covenant Communications, softcover, 144 pp.) $12.99
5. On Christmas morning, the Browne family decides to start a pay-it-forward experiment. They perform an act of service, make a note about it on a gold star, and then send the star through the mail to somebody else, in turn, to repeat charitable acts of services (The Star Leads Us to Him). Off it goes to LDS missionaries and friends in Brazil, Australia, Vietnam, Honduras, Nigeria, France, and elsewhere, until it arrives where it started the next Christmas. Written by Merrilee Boyack and illustrated by Jeff Harvey. (Cedar Fort, hardcover, 32 pp.) $16.99
6. A little shepherd boy asks his father about the promised Messiah in this Christmas book about the birth of Jesus, More Than Just a Star. The inside of the dust jacket becomes a nativity scene with symbols on the front and back flaps that can be cut out to remind the reader of the symbols of the Savior. (Deseret Book, hardcover, 32 pp.) $19.99
7. ”In the hottest month, on the hottest day, in the city of dreamers--California, L.A." begins the Latin Grammy winner Lucky Diaz's story of a little boy running through the barrio in search of his favorite paleta (popsicle). Paletero Man/¡Que Paletero tan Cool! is a colorful, bilingual (English/Spanish) story as addictive as popsicles, illustrated by celebrated artist Micah Player. (HarperCollins, softcover, 32 pp.) $7.99