Each year, 100 Grannies donate books to the Iowa City Community School District. This activity was Barbara Schlachter’s idea and we have been doing this since 2015. Our first book donation in 2015 was Buried Sunlight, by Penny Chisholm. We began donating books just to the elementary schools, and now we donate to elementary, junior high, and senior high schools throughout the district. The books are chosen by teachers in the district. Below are the books chosen for 2024.
Elementary Schools
Jumper: A Day In the Life of a Backyard Jumping Spider
By Jessica Lanan
A bold nonfiction story following a day in the life of a backyard jumping spider – meticulously researched and utterly charming. Open this book to discover the vibrant, hidden life of a backyard jumping spider.
What if you were small as a bean,
Could walk on the walls and ceiling,
Sense vibrations through your elbows,
And jump five times your body length?
That is Jumper’s world.
By Aaron Becker
A spectacular time-lapse portrait of humankind—and our impact on the natural world—from a Caldecott Honor–winning master of the wordless form
In an alternate past—or possible future—a mighty tree stands on the banks of a winding river, bearing silent witness to the flow of time and change. A family farms the fertile valley. Soon, a village sprouts, and not long after, a town. Residents learn to harness the water, the wind, and the animals in order to survive and thrive. The growing population becomes ever more industrious and cleverer, bending nature itself to their will and their ambition: redirecting rivers, harvesting lumber, reshaping the land, even extending daylight itself. . .
Junior High Schools
Mission: Arctic: A Scientific Adventure to a Changing North Pole
by Katharina Weiss-Tuider (Author), Christian Schneider (Illustrator)
The Arctic is changing—fast. The once-frozen landscape is melting before our eyes, and the effects can be felt around the world. But the Arctic is also the region we know the least about. Thick ice, extreme cold, and total darkness have always prevented scientists from uncovering its secrets. Until now.
This science-based guide for middle readers follows the 2019 MOSAiC expedition on the largest expedition to the Arctic ever undertaken. On board the Polarstern, a powerful ice-breaker research vessel, more than five hundred scientists from all over the world turned their attention to this mysterious region. Their mission? To let their vessel freeze in the sea ice and drift towards the North Pole in order to study how the Arctic is changing, and how these changes will affect our world.
High Schools
The 21: the true story of the youth who sued the US Government over climate change
By Elizabeth Rusch
In the ongoing landmark case Juliana vs. United States, twenty-one young plaintiffs claim that the government’s support of the fossil-fuel industry is actively contributing to climate change, and that all citizens have a constitutional right to a stable climate—especially children and young adults, because they cannot vote and will inherit the problems of the future.
Elizabeth Rusch’s The Twenty-One is a gripping legal and environmental thriller that tells the story of twenty-one young people and their ongoing case against the U.S. government for denying their constitutional right to life and liberty. A rich, informative, and multifaceted read, The Twenty-One stars the young plaintiffs and their attorneys; illuminates the workings of the United States’s judicial system and the relationship between government, citizens’ rights, and the environment; and asks readers to think deeply about the future of our planet.
By Corneila Mutel
In the last 200 years, Iowa’s prairies and other wildlands have been transformed into vast agricultural fields. This massive conversion has provided us with food, fiber, and fuel in abundance. But it has also robbed Iowa’s land of its native resilience and created the environmental problems that today challenge our everyday lives: polluted waters, increasing floods, loss and degradation of rich prairie topsoil, compromised natural systems, and now climate change.
In a straightforward, friendly style, Iowa’s premier scientists and experts consider what has happened to our land and outline viable solutions that benefit agriculture as well as the state’s human and wild residents.