Help Please! Book Suggestions?!

I have been a blogging bum for the past couple of months and I apologize! It's, unfortunately, easy to neglect keeping up with my blog when life gets busy. But now I have NO excuses....

We (my hubby and I) are in our 3rd week of summer vacation, and it has been glorious! We went to Tahoe last week, and this week we are visiting his fam in Chicago.

I have a request from you all (if you're out there...)

I have the joy of switching up my work position next year and I'm going to rejoin a non-profit, Harbor House, I used to work for as their Director of Education (I'm super excited about this!!).

I was asked to put together a list of books for donors to purchase for program participants. I'd love your suggestions! And, I'll share my final list with you. Here's some things to consider when suggesting books:

• Picture books are needed the most
• Program participants are in grades K-8
• Parents may not be able to read to their children at home, considering many are immigrants or refugees. So text should be at lower reading levels, so children can read them independently, if need be.
• Program participants come from a range of cultural backgrounds: African American, Latino, South East Asian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, etc...it would be wonderful if your suggestions represented a diversity of perspectives/children.
• Any highly-engaging book would be awesome. What are your kids/students eating up right now??

Leave a comment if you have a good book suggestion! A book will be given to each program participant for their birthday this coming year. More suggestions=better, because there are over 70 students the attend the after school program daily, and it would be great for them to have some choice when picking their special book.

Hope you're enjoying these summer days!