Sam Potts

• 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
• 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.

Bruce Hale

• Percy Jackson and The Olympians

• Exciting, funny, and occasionally gross. What more could you want?

• The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games, Book 1

• Intense stuff — reality TV taken to the extreme — but I couldn't put it down.

• The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian

• Funny, touching, and fascinating — plus it has excellent cartoons.

• Out from Boneville, Boneville Series, #1

• Love the drawings, love the characters, love the stories.

• Whales On Stilts

• Straight-out wacky, hilarious stuff.

Patrick Jones

• Coyote Steals the Blanket, A Ute Tale

• A trickster tale about a coyote, a blanket, and a rock. Hot times in the desert.

• Dangerous Girls

• Or anything by Stine. The man's a genius. Don't believe me: this is about twin teen girls vampires one hot summer. Do the math.

• Hidden Talents

• This has it all: humor, adventure, smart mouth teen boys, stupid rules to rebel against, and fire.

• Scholastic Book Of Lists

• When you don’t have time for chapters or even paragraphs, choose bullets. Bullet points that is.

• Scary Stories 3

• Nothing wrong with the first two volumes, but this is "just delicious!" Don't read this during lunch or before or after.

• Strong to the Hoop

• A 10-year-old gets a chance to play with the big boys. Read this and you'll feel the sweat fly off the pages.

• The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music

• By the Rolling Stone editors. An earlier edition of this book was my Bible at age 17. Everything you need to know.

Tony DiTerlizzi

• 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.

Mo Willems

• The Complete Peanuts
• Charles M. Schulz

• The gold standard of comic strips. Fun for everyone; except Charlie Brown, who seems a little down on his luck.

• The Complete George and Martha
• James Marshall

• Lessons learned include: just because you've got a best friend doesn't mean you have to pour pea soup in your shoes. I try to re-read this before I start making new book.

• The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
• Bill Watterson

• When Hobbes is wise, Calvin is a stinker. When Hobbes is hungry, Calvin is in trouble.

• Go, Dog, Go!
• Philip D. Eastman

• A dog party in a tree? Wait for me, I’ve got to get my hat!

• Cul De Sac, This Exit

• The best comic strip you've never heard of. Alice and her family walk in the footsteps of Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, only sideways.

• Children at Play, A Cul-de-Sac Collection