Click here for some authors we’ve talked to about their books and their process.

And click below for some recommendations from some authors we trust.

 

Click here for Everyone

Sam Potts

designed this website.  He also designed the JS Worldwide website.  He has also designed all kinds of other stuff, beautifully.

  • Lou Gehrig, Boy of the Sandlots
  • Guernsey Van Riper Jr.

  • I think this is the first book I ever picked out on my own and read by myself. I’m pretty sure it is. I can tell you this for sure: Lou Gehrig always has been and always will be my favorite baseball player. And I’m from Boston, so that’s saying something about the influence of this book.

  • What Do People Do All Day?
  • Richard Scarry

  • Before there was the Internet, there was What Do People Do All Day? to describe the whole world and everything in it. Still hours of fun to explore every page.

  • Stuart Little
  • E.B. White

  • He wears a sweater and sails a boat and drives a car and gets dumped on a garbage barge. Oh, and he’s a mouse.

  • Paddle To The Sea
  • Holling C. Holling

  • An adventure story starring a carved wooden boat that travels all the way across Canda. A carved wooden boat? you say. That’s right: a carved wooden boat! I wished I could be that boat.

  • The Great Brain, Great Brain Series
  • John D. Fitzgerald

  • This book and the other Great Brain books that followed are a handy how-to guide in the arts of scheming, swindling, cheating, and being a younger brother.

  • Tintin Adventures (Series)
  • Herge

  • We just called them “Tintins.” I’d say, “Do you have any new Tintins?” and my friend Jamie would say, “I just finished The Black Island. You can borrow it but you have to give it back.” YOu always had to give them ack because these books are precious.

  • Dubliners
  • James Joyce

  • Yeah it’s James Joyce, but so what? He ain’t so tough. The beauty of these stories is in their simplicity. You’ll be able to taste the peas with vinegar and pepper in “Two Gallants.” Read this when your friends are reading Catcher in the Rye. (And read that one, too.)

  • Ficciones
  • Jorge Luis Borges

  • A character named Borges comes across an encyclopedia of a fictional land. Pierre Menard rewrites bits of Don Quixote verbatim, by coincidence. Funes remembers everything that happened, ever. Amazing. Worth re-reading about every five years or so.

  • A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Essays and Arguments
  • David Foster Wallace

  • If you get far enough to read about the toilets in the title essay, you’ll probably go on to read every word Wallace ever wrote. This book also contains the most terrifying description of baton-twirling you could ever read.

  • Anatomy of a Typeface
  • Anthony Lawson

  • For the serious typographer as well as the font enthusiast: histories of all the classic typefaces from the days when fonts weighed about 50 pounds (because they were made out of lead). Simply indispensable.

Stephen Emond

Stephen Emond is an awesome author and illustrator whose engaging blend of novel and art is perfect for reluctant readers and guy audiences (among others). His novels include Happyface, Winter Town, and Bright Lights, Dark Nights.

Jason Reynolds

JASON REYNOLDS is crazy. About stories. After earning a BA in English from The University of Maryland, College Park, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where you can often find him walking the four blocks from the train to his apartment talking to himself. Well, not really talking to himself, but just repeating character names and plot lines he thought of on the train, over and over again, because he's afraid he'll forget it all before he gets home. When I Was the Greatest is his debut novel. His next, The Boy in the Black Suit, comes out in 2015. He's also the co-author of (in our opinion) the criminally-overlooked poetry/art hybrid memoir My Name is Jason. Mine Too.: Our Story. Our Way.

From his website: "Here's what I know: I know there are a lot - A LOT - of young people who hate reading. I know that many of these book haters are boys. I know that many of these book-hating boys, don't actually hate books, they hate boredom. If you are reading this, and you happen to be one of these boys, first of all, you're reading this so my master plan is already working (muahahahahahaha) and second of all, know that I feel you. I REALLY do. Because even though I'm a writer, I hate reading boring books too."

  • The Young Landlords
  • Walter Dean Myers

  • It's a brilliantly gritty story about a bunch of kids who get swindled into taking over a slum building. Super creative, yet totally feasible in New York City.

  • Kira-Kira
  • Cynthia Kadohata

  • The story takes place in the sixties in the segregated south. Black people know where they stand. White people know where they stand. But what about a Japanese family?

  • Noggin
  • John Corey Whaley

  • Smart and hilarious story about a young man who is dying and his parents decide to cryogenically freeze his head. A few years later, he's back from the dead. And he's still in high school.

  • The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
  • Walter Mosley

  • One of the gems that flew under the radar because Mosely is so prolific. But it's a sweet, yet biting story about an elder man, Ptolemy Grey, suffering from dementia.

  • Erasure
  • Percival Everett

  • It's a weird book about a stuffy writer and his hatred for the industry. His frustration with his agent wanting him to write a "sellable" book pushes him to pen "street fiction" just as a middle finger to the corporate publishing structure. Madness ensues, and it's downright hilarious.

Tony DiTerlizzi

is the illustrator of The Spiiderwick Chronicles, The Spider and the Fly, Ted, and many more.  He uses his powers for good.

  • Peter Pan and Wendy

  • J.M. Barrie's classic has surly pirates, bloodthirsty native Americans, a hungry crocodile, feisty faeries and flying kids with weapons . . . what more could you ask for?

  • Watership Down

  • Richard Adams takes you on an incredible quest from a home colony that’s completely eradicated to Shangri la. One the way, there are monsters, villains, allies, oh, and a fascist leader trying to seize the hero's new home . . . and its all told with rabbits. You read that right — rabbits.

  • The Mouse and the Motorcycle

  • Mouse buddy + toy motorcycle = Awesome!

  • The Lorax

  • In my mind, this one of Dr. Seuss’s undisputed classics. Sadly, we need the Lorax now more than ever.

  • Lafcadio: The Lion That Shot Back

  • One of Shel Silverstein's lesser known titles, but one of my all-time favorites. Actually, I learned about this one when my younger brother read it for school and had me help with his book report. It is one of those stories that you will always remember.

Bruce Hale