Here are 100 books that Adrian Simcox Does Not Have a Horse fans have personally recommended if you like
Adrian Simcox Does Not Have a Horse.
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I have been captivated by the emotional power of picture books since I was a child and have spent my adult life reading, sharing, and trying to write the kinds of books that connect to the youngest of readers on a deeper level. In Looking for Smile, I tried to write about the day when I was five years old and experienced real sadness for the first time. This became a story about Bear and his friend, Smile. My favorite kind of picture books are those that make me smile and tear up at the same time. I decided I would share some recent books that have had that effect on me…
Based on a true story about two polar bears at the Central Park Zoo, this is a beautiful book about the death of a loved one. In a zoo, there may literally be only two-of-a-kind, so the loss of one is especially poignant. The realization that one of the pair would be “going away” at first seems almost unbearable. Their leave-taking (complete with days of denial and days of laying together comforting each other) really takes readers through the process and yet offers enough wisdom and hope to help them come out better on the other side.
A beautiful, honest portrait of loss and deep friendship told through the story of two iconic polar bears.
Gus lives in a big park in the middle of an even bigger city, and he spends his days with Ida. Ida is right there. Always.
Then one sad day, Gus learns that Ida is very sick, and she isn’t going to get better. The friends help each other face the difficult news with whispers, sniffles, cuddles, and even laughs. Slowly Gus realizes that even after Ida is gone, she will still be with him—through the sounds of their city, and the…
In a time of alternative facts and the loss of a shared sense of reality, A Foot is Not a Fish playfully illustrates the difference between what is true and what is not through absurd fun comparisons that every child—and parent—will instantly understand.
When I first set out to be a writer, I envisioned becoming a novelist. So, while working full-time as a lawyer, I wrote several novel manuscripts over the years, late at night and on the weekends. However, I would often get bogged down and/or frustrated with the process and would set those novels aside to pen a few children's stories for fun. And boy, did those stories delight me. I felt my imagination soar and my childhood passions flood my soul. My children's stories are what brought me my first publishing deals and what made me an author and public speaker.
I love this book so much, and I have huge respect for author-illustrators who write with spare, gorgeous prose and are able to enhance the story with dynamic, beautiful images. This book seems especially relevant nowadays when our country is undergoing seismic, scary shifts.
It’s a story about an exhausted stranger who arrives with a mysterious suitcase, and the presence of this odd-looking newcomer incites speculation and suspicion within the community. The tale focuses on a group of animals who debate what to do about the newcomer, but the subtext is a brilliant commentary on immigration, refugees, and how empathy can build communities, while a lack of kindness can tear us apart and even lead to violence.
Shortlisted for the 2020 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal
"At a time when over 65 million people are forcibly displaced around the world, this beautifully illustrated and wise, gentle tale of tolerance and kindness for fellow humans resonates deeply. I hope all parents share The Suitcase with their children." - Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner
"A simple, powerful way to introduce the idea of kindness to strangers to young children" - Axel Scheffler, illustrator of The Gruffalo
"Welcome and understanding are at the heart of this children's book by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros. Beautifully illustrated,…
I have been captivated by the emotional power of picture books since I was a child and have spent my adult life reading, sharing, and trying to write the kinds of books that connect to the youngest of readers on a deeper level. In Looking for Smile, I tried to write about the day when I was five years old and experienced real sadness for the first time. This became a story about Bear and his friend, Smile. My favorite kind of picture books are those that make me smile and tear up at the same time. I decided I would share some recent books that have had that effect on me…
A dreamlike book about an all-alone bear who befriends a balloon. When the little bear accidentally punctures his new friend, he blames himself. And now the poor thing is not only utterly alone, but is overcome with sadness and self-blame. The delicacy with which this story treats the difficult topics of shame and self-blame is marvelous. Making a bad situation worse by blaming it on yourself is just so relevant to all of our lives, no matter how young we are and this book really captures that in an elemental way. The tender, emotive illustrations are a perfect complement to the delicate and penetrating text.
When a girl in India discovers a Stone slab on a weedy patch of land she calls to her friends, "Look! Look!" The children clear away the weeds and garbage and find more stones. They called their families to come and see. Word travels to villages nearby and more and…
I’m someone who has had a lot of pets in my life––dogs, fish, birds, turtles, tortoises––which means I’m also someone who has had a lot of pets in my life die, because the worst thing about pets is they don’t live as long as we do. I spent ten years writing Good Grief, but really, I’ve been researching Good Grief my whole life, ever since my first pet died. This list includes some classics I loved when I was a kid, and some newer titles that I learned about while researching Good Grief. All are wonderful and will be a balm during a hard time.
This book is absolutely breathtaking and I cry every time I read it.
The illustrations are gorgeous, and I find it so soothing to think about my dead dogs being in a version of heaven as beautiful as the one that Catia Chien has illustrated. My favorite part of this book is how it is narrated by the old and dying dog himself, and when he finally dies and becomes part of the sky––his sweet face continues to look down on his beloved small human (“Little”) and her new puppy.
All the pets we love are always part of us forever, and I like to think they’re looking out for us. I’m tearing up just writing this!
Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey meets Dog Heaven in this profoundly beautiful book about the special relationship between kids and dogs, the importance of language, and finding the meaning of life even in its final days.
Poignant, hopeful, and lovingly told, this dog's journey-told by the dog himself in his own unique words-proves that love abides beyond a lifetime, out of sight but never far away.
As a dog and his little girl go on their final walk together, he experiences the sights, smells, and wonders of this world one last time before peacefully passing on. But for such a…
I am the author of two middle grade books, and I love writing about kids who may not have much materially but abound in heart and courage. I grew up in a small southern town and my childhood was just like that—low on income but full of love, hope, and friendship. I want kids to know that despite their circumstances there is hope for a better life. Like Wavie’s mom tells her in my book, Hope In The Holler, “You’ve got as much right to a good life as anybody. So go find it!”
This beautiful book opens with the line, “Every day Mr. McInnis tells us to imagine our future.” Unfortunately, for Brittany, she can’t envision a future that holds anything good. Her mother is in an abusive and controlling relationship and her grandmother suffers from dementia. I love that this book shows a positive teacher, a mom who, despite her own bad choices, truly loves her children, and a family willing to go to bat for one another. Extra points for the intergenerational storyline of a grandmother who lives with the family.
A girl wishes for a better life for herself, her mom, and her baby brother and musters the courage to make it happen in this moving and emotionally satisfying story for readers of Kate DiCamillo and Lynda Mullaly Hunt.
“Once You Know This reminds me of a flower blooming in the crack of a sidewalk. It’s important, and it’s special. Just read it.”—Ali Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Thing About Jellyfish
Eleven-year-old Brittany knows there has to be a better world out there. Lately, though, it sure doesn’t feel like it. She and her best friend, Marisol,…
Mark Greenside has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protestor, anti-draft counselor, Vista Volunteer, union leader, and college professor. He holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin and his stories have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. He presently lives in Alameda, California, where he continues to teach and be politically active, and Brittany, France, where he still can’t do anything without asking for help.
Jean-Marie Déguignet is not your typical Breton peasant. He’s small and puny—and these people aren’t built that way. At nine, a bee caused him to fall and hit his head, leaving an ugly wound that oozed for years and left a deep indentation in his skull when it finally healed. The result was a lifetime interest in bees and a lonely life, as no one wanted to be near him.
A curious and isolated lad, he becomes an auto-diktat, and like many auto-diktats has lots of disparaging things to say about those who are less educated and more successful and powerful than he—especially church and government officials, monarchists, and landlords: ignorant bastards he constantly fought (and lost) who controlled and ruined his life. He’s an anti-cleric in this most Catholic of lands. He’s a Republican in a time and place of monarchists. He understands the world as a scientist, through…
A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. Brittany during the nineteenth century was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, backwards by most French standards; formal education among rural society was either unavailable or dismissed as unnecessary, while the church and local myth defined most people's reasoning and motivation. Jean-Marie Déguignet is unique not only as a literate Breton peasant, but in his skepticism for the church, his interest in…
Discover the first adventure in the Curious Bunny series!
In Boomer Sees the Town, Boomer leaves the forest to explore the wonders, sounds, and surprises of the big city. Perfect for curious minds and early readers, this heartwarming children’s story encourages imagination, discovery, and kindness.
I am the Eldon R. Lindsey Chair of Free Enterprise and Professor of Economics and Finance at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. Most of my writing is academic, including in the Independent Review, Journal of Markets and Morality, and Presidential Studies Quarterly recently. Before pursuing my doctoral degree, I served in the U.S. Army and worked for an insurance company.
This recommendation is more technical than my previous recommendations.
The authors reconstruct many measures of income and income inequality to show that the widening gap indicated by official statistics is an artifact of certain assumptions underlying these statistics.
First, and most importantly, regarding those who are dependent on the social safety net, "income" includes only cash benefits dispensed by the government, not the cash value of non-cash benefits; and, for those who are taxpayers, "income" is defined as before-tax income, not after-tax income.
Second, monetary values are incorrectly corrected by the CPI (the authors propose using the chained-linked CPI).
The book might be considered to present an agenda for further research on the specifics it addresses and similar concerns.
Everything you know about income inequality, poverty, and other measures of economic well-being in America is wrong. In this provocative book, a former United States senator, eminent economist, and a former senior leader at the Bureau of Labor Statistics challenge the prevailing consensus that income inequality is a growing threat to American society. By taking readers on a deep dive into the way government measures economic well-being, they demonstrate that our official statistics dramatically overstate inequality. Getting the facts straight reveals that the key measures of well-being are greater than the…
I’ve been studying China for almost 60 years and have visited the country 40 times. Around 1990 I became aware of the sad situation of migrants from the countryside trying to move to cities to earn a better living. There they are met with low wages, poor living conditions, and discrimination. I spent 6 or 7 years interviewing them and writing about them and the book I wrote won a prize for the best book on 20th century China published in 1999. Then I learned about the workers who were laid off as China modernized, and went to talk with them. The present book is full of empathy and concern for these people.
This is a brilliant anthropological field study of how rural migrants and laid-off Chinese workers cope with their lot in a region where factories have shut down and there are few ways of earning money.
The two competing groups are both very poorly served by the government and they are forced to live among trash with little to no welfare. There are here, again, copious quotations from the people involved and you can learn a lot about the varying conditions that mark the different lives of these two groups of people.
Despite massive changes to its economic policies, China continues to define itself as socialist; since 1949 and into the present, the Maoist slogan "Serve the People" has been a central point of moral and political orientation. Yet several decades of market-based reforms have resulted in high urban unemployment, transforming the proletariat vanguard into a new urban poor. How do unemployed workers come to terms with their split status, economically marginalized but still rhetorically central to the way China claims to understand itself? How does a state dedicated to serving "the people" manage the poverty of its citizens? Mun Young Cho…
I’ve been a rights advocate since I was a middle schooler planning how to help save the whales. In college, I volunteered in anti-apartheid campaigns, then became a journalist covering the rise of the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru. I wanted my research and words to make change. I spent 12 years covering Peru and Colombia for Human Rights Watch. Now, I try to inspire other young people to learn about and advocate for human rights as a professor and the co-director of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute. I also write fiction for kids that explores human rights themes and just completed The Bond Trilogy, an epic fantasy.
One of the most important new issues faced by rights advocates is climate change. Macarthur genius award-winner Catherine Coleman Flowers is on the front line of that fight, based on her own childhood as the daughter of an activist Black family in Lowndes County, Alabama. This memoir captures Flowers’ essence: someone who just can’t let an injustice slide by. And she will talk to anyone who might be able to help, including with cleaning up the raw sewage that continues to poison the homes of many poor Alabamians. Flowers clearly describes the link between local rights issues and the global campaign to deal with climate change.
The MacArthur grant-winning environmental justice activist's riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America's most vulnerable
A Smithsonian Magazine Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020
Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur "genius," grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that's been called "Bloody Lowndes" because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it's Ground Zero for a new movement that is also Flowers's life's work-a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor,…
Floretta- the story of an old woman who discovers life beautifully anew thru the helping hands of a child. The chakra colors of dawn and twilight are woven through the pages as the cycle of life is magically composed. The subject of “heaven,” has the potential to open discussions with…
For over 44 years, I have been a writer, speaker, anchor, interviewer, teacher, analyst/commentator, publisher, producer, director, and consultant across different mass media: the written word, the spoken word, and the audio-visual medium – printed publications and websites, radio and podcasts, television, and documentary cinema. As a student of the political economy of India, I have sought to investigate the working of the nexus between business and politics. I am of the view that crony capitalism and oligarchy are at the roots of much that has gone wrong in the country of my birth and domicile which is often described as the “world’s largest democracy”.
American author Mark Twain had described the last decades of the 19th century as the Gilded Age in the United States, a period when on the surface everything appeared to be glittering like gold concealing the filth and ugliness that lay beneath. British journalist and academic James Crabtree, now based in Singapore, believes that the last few decades in India closely resembles the Gilded Age of the US. His 357-page book is filled with dozens of anecdotes about some of India’s most wealthy individuals such as Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, and Vijay Mallya. His meetings with them and his detailed descriptions of their lifestyles and demeanour make for racy reading.
A disclaimer: Crabtree has described in flattering terms his meeting with this writer and referred to some of my articles and books.
A colorful and revealing portrait of the rise of India’s new billionaire class in a radically unequal society
India is the world’s largest democracy, with more than one billion people and an economy expanding faster than China’s. But the rewards of this growth have been far from evenly shared, and the country’s top 1% now own nearly 60% of its wealth. In megacities like Mumbai, where half the population live in slums, the extraordinary riches of India’s new dynasties echo the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers of America's Gilded Age, funneling profits from huge conglomerates into lifestyles of conspicuous consumption.
