CurriConnects Book List - Maine
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Maine
This carefully organized collection presents books about the state of Maine across three age-appropriate reading levels, complete with Lexile measures to support the selection of books suitable for diverse learners. Each title features a concise description of its content, helping teachers, librarians, and families connect readers with compelling stories about Maine’s people, landscape, and life.
Picture Books
Birdie's Lighthouse - Deborah Hopkinson, (978-0689835292), Fiction
Interest level: 1-4, Lexile: 700
Birdie's Lighthouse follows a young girl in 1855 Maine who steps up to tend her family's island light during a fierce Atlantic storm. Told through reflective diary entries, this historical picture book highlights courage, maritime heritage, and the vital duties of nineteenth-century lighthouse keepers.
Blueberries for Sal - Robert McCloskey, (978-0140501698), Non-fiction
Interest level: K-3, Lexile: 600
A little girl and her mother meet a mother bear and her cub while picking blueberries on a Maine hillside, and each youngster ends up following the wrong mother. A Caldecott Honor Book set in the Maine countryside.
L is for Lobster: A Maine Alphabet - Cynthia Furlong Reynolds, (978-1585360246), Non-fiction
Interest level: PreK-2, Lexile: 850
This book explores the coastal history, maritime traditions, and unique geography of the Pine Tree State. Through a dual-level format featuring accessible rhymes alongside rich informational text, young readers discover iconic local symbols ranging from lighthouse history to blueberry harvesting.
Miss Rumphius - Barbara Cooney, (978-0140505399), Non-fiction
Interest level: PreK-3, Lexile: 680
Miss Alice Rumphius has always dreamed of traveling the world, living by the sea, and making the world more beautiful. Based on the story of the Lupine Lady, Miss Rumphius plants lupine seeds all over Maine.
One Morning in Maine - Robert McCloskey, (978-0140501742), Fiction
Interest level: PreK-3, Lexile: 610
One morning on the Maine coast, young Sal wakes up to discover she has her first loose tooth, and sets off with her father to the harbor to have his boat's engine repaired, encountering neighbors and a helpful gull along the way.
Visiting Aunt Sylvia's: A Maine Adventure - Heather Austin, (978-0892725236), Non-fiction
Interest level: PreK-3
This story follows two siblings on a cozy seasonal trip to their aunt's cabin in the woods. Richly illustrated with warm watercolor scenes, the picture book captures simple coastal outdoor activities, family togetherness, and the natural beauty of autumn in Maine.
Wild Fox - Cherie Mason, (978-1608932122), Non-fiction
Interest level: 2-4, Lexile: 990
An injured fox wanders into the author’s yard, and she befriends him over the years, always maintaining that he remains wild.
Middle Grade Books
Fudge-A-Mania - Judy Blume, (978-0142408773), Fiction
Interest level: 2-6, Lexile: 490
Pete's summer vacation in Maine with his family proves entertaining, considering the presence of his younger, humorous brother and his nemesis from school, Sheila.
Moo - Sharon Creech, (978-0062415264), Fiction
Interest level: 3-7, Lexile: 790
Reena and her family move from their house in the city to a small town in rural Maine. While she is looking forward to spending time on the beach or eating lobster rolls, her parents have a different idea. They sign the kids up to help an eclectic neighbor with her animals - a pig, a cat, a snake, and a stubborn cow.
Sand Dollar Summer - Kimberly Jones, (978-0545081986), Fiction
Interest level: 4-6, Lexile: 730
When twelve-year-old Lise and her younger brother are sent to spend the summer with their reclusive Aunt Elna on the coast of Maine after a family tragedy, she must navigate grief, a prickly new guardian, and unfamiliar small-town life.
The Canning Season - Polly Horvath, (978-0374399566), Fiction
Interest level: 2-7, Lexile: 870
When thirteen-year-old Ratchet Clark is sent to live with her eccentric, elderly great-aunts in rural Maine, she's thrown into their odd household of ghost stories, endless canning, and an unexpected foundling child who arrives on their doorstep.
The Dollar Kids - Jennifer Richardson Jacobson, (978-1536213119), Fiction
Interest level: 5-9, Lexile: 790
Hoping to build a new life after tragedy, Lowen Grover and his mother move to a former mill town, where they sell houses for one dollar. They arrive to find the deal may be too good to be true.
The Sign of the Beaver - Elizabeth George Speare, (978-0547577111), Fiction
Interest level: 5-7, Lexile: 770
A young boy survives in his family's makeshift house in the wilderness only because the local Indians instruct him in how to live as they do.
The White Wolf - Ron Roy, (978-0375824807), Fiction
Interest level: 1-5, Lexile: 630
When Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose visit mystery writer Wallis Wallace at her new cabin in the Maine wilderness, they spot a white mother wolf and her pups on a cliff — only to have the pups stolen soon after. This is book 23 in Ron Roy's A to Z Mysteries series.
Young Adult and Adult Books
Almost, Maine - John Cariani, (978-1250102898), Fiction
Interest level: 9-12, Lexile: 720
In the northern town of Almost, Maine, strange things are happening. They are falling in love. They are falling out of love. Life may never be the same.
Converting Kate - Beckie Weinheimer, (978-0670061525), Fiction
Interest level: 6-12, Lexile: 740
After her father's death, fifteen-year-old Kate moves with her mother from Phoenix to a small coastal Maine town, where she begins to question the strict, all-controlling religion she was raised in and to forge her own beliefs — through new friends, a budding romance, and her father's beloved books.
Daughters of the Sea #2: May - Kathryn Lasky, (978-0439783118), Fiction
Interest level: 9-12, Lexile: 770
Living on an isolated lighthouse island off the coast of Maine, May Plum feels trapped by her strict upbringing and her mother's cruelty, until her fifteenth birthday brings a startling discovery: she's a mermaid, not meant for a life on land. As she embraces the sea and falls for a young astronomy student, a jealous suitor threatens to destroy the freedom and love she's finally found.
HardScrabble Kids: Semi-magical tales of Maine - John Rogers Clark, IV, (979-8986476605), Fiction
Interest level: 9-12
This collection of sixteen stories and one novella follows kids like Myrna, Icky, Sara, and Greg across Maine as they face everyday challenges — a bully, a haunted outhouse, an alien stranded in a mall parking lot — each resolved with a touch of homegrown magic.
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout, (978-0812971835), Fiction
Interest level: 9-12
This novel-in-stories follows a retired, sharp-tongued schoolteacher navigating grief, marriage, and small-town life in the fictional coastal town of Crosby, Maine.
The Ratted Bones - S. M. Parker, (978-1481482042), Fiction
Interest level: 9-12, Lexile: 630
Rilla is haunted by words that seem to follow her wherever she goes in her small Maine town. She meets an archaeology student who begins to unearth secrets, and her visions and feelings grow. She can feel a girl is around her - her voice, her sadness, and her pain.
Zoey Fools Around - Katherine Applegate, (978-0380802111), Fiction
Interest level: 9-12
Growing up on a small island means everyone knows everything about everyone. When an old friend returns from jail, their existing connections start to unravel, and the group realizes they might not know as much as they thought.