Hooked on Books for Kids

09/21/2026

LOOKS ON BOOKS: “K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches” by Tyler Kepner. Vintage.

The slider. The fastball. The curveball. The knuckball. The splitter. The screwball. The sinker. The changeup. The spitball. The cutter. Kepner explains all about baseball through these 10 pitches (but what about the ole dipsy-do?). Not only is it a history of the sport, but it’s filled with insights from Bob Gipson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw. Enjoy the action of the game from where it all begins.

09/21/2026

LOOKS ON BOOKS: “London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth” by Patrick Radden Keefe. Doubleday.

In November of 2019, surveillance cameras caught the apparent su***de of Zac Brettler as he jumped from the Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the Thames. In their grief, Matthew and Rachelle Brettler struggle to find out more about their son’s death. He had his struggles but never seemed suicidal. Turns out, they never really knew Zac, who, among other secrets, had a phony alter ego, Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a fortune. Soon, shadowy characters like Akbar Shamji and Indian Dave join in Zac’s hard-to-believe life. As always, journalist Keefe makes nonfiction sound like fiction, and in no time we’re off on an incredible true story.

09/16/2026

09/14/2026

LOOKS ON BOOKS: “Wake Now in the Fire: A Graphic Novel” by Jarrett Dapier. Illustrations by AJ Dungo. Ten Speed Graphic. Ages young adult.

When it becomes clear to the students at all of Chicago’s public high schools that the graphic novel “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi — a book about oppression, survival, and resistance to authoritarianism — has been banned across the school district, they rebel in all the ways they have at their disposal. Dapier-Dungo’s book is a fictionalized account of a true story that galvanized a city.

09/14/2026

LOOKS ON BOOKS: “Don’t Trust Fish” by Neil Sharpson. Illustrated by Caldecott medalist Dan Santat. Dial Books. Ages 3-5.

Think fish are your friends? Think they look cool just floating there in the water? Well, THINK AGAIN! Here are three eminently logical reasons why not to trust fish: 1. Some are as big as a Greyhound. 2. They spend all of their time in places we can’t see them. What are they doing there? And 3. What exactly are they teaching in their “schools”? They’re subversive, I tell you. SUBVERSIVE!

09/07/2026

LOOKS ON BOOKS: “Ballpark: Baseball in the American City” by Paul Goldberger. Knopf.

Goldberger — the former architecture critic for the New York Times and the New Yorker — takes fans on a tour of the earliest parks (Brooklyn’s Union Grounds and Washington Park) to some of the mourned parks of the 1900s (Detroit’s Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati’s Palace of the Fans) to the latest ballparks as theme parks of today. He shows how such worshipped grounds are not merely places for “one, two, three strikes yer out” but are among our most cherished forms of public space.

09/07/2026

LOOKS ON BOOKS: “Sleepless” by Gordon Korman. Scholastic Press. Ages 9-12.

Mickey doesn’t need sleep. Skye doesn’t need sleep. Levi doesn’t need sleep. Neither do Cyrus and Thea. But none of the five children knows the other doesn’t need sleep. All they know is that all this extra time can be used to their advantage. But once they find each other, two questions remain: What’s keeping just them up each night and why?

08/31/2026

LOOKS ON BOOKS: “John of John” by Douglas Stuart. Grove Press.

A young man returns to his Hebridean home with an art education he doesn’t know what to do with. Welcoming him are his dad and grandmother, a profanity-laden woman who helped him cope with a motherless upbringing. His dad’s welcome, however, isn’t so warm. Stuart’s book, longlisted for the Booker prize, is about a father and son who share the same secret.

08/31/2026

LOOKS ON BOOKS: “The Future Book” by Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris. Knopf Books for Young Readers. Ages 5-8.

A journey to the world of tomorrow filled with unexpected words, strange customs, and mind-blowing colors. All other books were written in the past; this one’s written in the future. Buckle up, Futurenauts!