CurriConnects Book List - Maryland
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Maryland
From the shores of the Chesapeake Bay to the streets of Baltimore, this book collection brings Maryland's history, wildlife, and people to life. Each title includes a brief description, a suggested interest level, and a Lexile measure when one is available, so you can match readers to the right book. Use the collection to launch a state study, support research projects, or help students discover the stories of their own state.
Picture Books
A Ride to Remember: A Civil Rights Story - Sharon Langley and Amy Nathan, (978-1419736858), Non-fiction
Interest level: 1-4, Lexile: 790
In the early 1960s, African American families were turned away from amusement parks across the country. This true story recounts how a community—Black and white together—organized demonstrations and public protests that led to the desegregation of Maryland's Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in the summer of 1963, opening its gates to everyone for the first time.
Aunt Flossie's Hats (and Crab Cakes Later) - Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard, (978-0395720776), Fiction
Interest level: PreK-3, Lexile: 510
Every Sunday, sisters Sarah and Susan visit their Great-great-aunt Flossie — and every visit means trying on hats from her extraordinary collection and listening to the stories each one holds. Warm and gently humorous, Aunt Flossie's tales offer young readers a window into Baltimore's past and a portrait of a family that treasures time spent together.
B is for Blue Crab: A Maryland Alphabet - Shirley Menendez, (978-1585361601), Non-fiction
Interest level: 1-3, Lexile: 1020
Perched just below the Mason-Dixon line, Maryland draws from both Northern and Southern tradition. From the vast Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States, to the historic streets of Annapolis, the U.S. Naval Academy, the thunder of the Preakness Stakes, and the legacies of Harriet Tubman and Francis Scott Key, this alphabet book captures everything that makes Maryland a state unlike any other.
Chadwick the Crab - Priscilla Cummings, (978-087033347), Fiction
Interest level: 1-3, Lexile: 720
Chadwick is a charismatic blue crab with a circle of Chesapeake Bay friends and a lot to teach. Through his adventures, young readers learn about the bay's ecosystem, the importance of fighting pollution, the value of friendship, and the courage it takes to chase a dream.
Chesapeake Bay Walk - David Owen Bell, (978-0870335075), Non-fiction
Interest level: PreK-2
From sandy beaches to mudflats, piers to marshes and shallows, this inviting book guides young readers along the Chesapeake Bay's diverse shorelines. With vivid illustrations and clear, age-appropriate text, it introduces children to the bay's food chain, seasonal rhythms, and the creatures that call it home—complete with a checklist for budding naturalists to track their own discoveries.
Goliath: Hero of the Great Baltimore Fire - Claudia Friddell, (978-1585364558), Non-fiction
Interest level: 2-4, Lexile: 850
When fire swept through Baltimore in 1904, it burned for three days and threatened to consume the entire city. Hundreds of firefighters, soldiers, and citizens fought to hold it back, but among all the heroes who answered the call, one stood apart. Goliath, the massive, fearless lead horse of Engine Company 15, pulled the enormous Hale Water Tower straight into the blaze, embodying the kind of courage legends are made of.
Perry's Baltimore Adventure: A Bird'S-Eye View of Charm City - Peter E. Dans, (978-0870335402), Fiction
Interest level: 2-3, Lexile: 650
High above Baltimore on a skyscraper ledge, peregrine falcons Scarlett and Beauregard raise four chicks — and one of them, Perry, can barely wait to take flight and see the world below. When the day finally comes, his father takes him on a sweeping tour of Baltimore, from its most beloved landmarks to the lesser-known corners that give Charm City its character.
The Star-Spangled Banner - Peter Spier, (978-0440406976), Non-fiction
Interest level: 1-6, Lexile: 590
Step into the moment Francis Scott Key stood watching the Battle of Baltimore and found the words that would become America's national anthem. With illustrated lyrics and rich historical imagery, this beautifully rendered tribute traces the anthem's turbulent origins and follows its meaning across generations, exploring what the flag has represented to Americans from that first dawn's early light to today.
Middle Grade Books
A Savage Thunder: Antietam and the Bloody Road to Freedom - Jim Murphy, (978-0689876332), Non-fiction
Interest level: 5-8, Lexile: 1180
In September 1862, two massive armies converged at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, each understanding that the outcome would shape the future of the nation and the fate of millions of enslaved people. Drawing on photographs, battlefield maps, and firsthand accounts, acclaimed nonfiction writer Jim Murphy places readers in the middle of the chaos and carnage of a single day that left 22,717 people dead or wounded (the bloodiest day in American history) and compelled Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
Captain Kate - Carolyn Reeder, (978-1890920142), Fiction
Interest level: 3-6, Lexile: 920
Kate has always loved the canal boat trips her family makes along the C&O Canal, but this year everything is different. Her father is gone, her mother has remarried and is expecting a baby, and her new stepfather is away at war. With her family counting on the income from hauling coal the 184 miles between Cumberland and Georgetown, Kate refuses to let the trip fall through. Reluctantly teaming up with her resentful stepbrother Seth, she takes the tiller while he walks the mules, navigating Confederate threats, canal locks, and each other, in a journey that may teach them both what family really means.
Library on Wheels: Mary Lemist Titcomb and America's First Bookmobile - Sharlee Glenn, (978-1419728754), Non-fiction
Interest level: 3-7
Mary Lemist Titcomb had a problem: her library wasn't reaching Washington County, Maryland's 25,000 rural residents. So she fixed it — first with book-deposit stations spread across the county, then with a dedicated children's room, and finally with her most daring idea yet: a horse-drawn Book Wagon that rolled books directly to the people who needed them. By 1922, the idea had spread nationwide, and the bookmobile was born.
Squished: A Graphic Novel - Megan Wagner Lloyd, (978-1338568936), Fiction
Interest level: 5-8, Lexile: 520
Avery Lee loves her life in Hickory Valley, Maryland — her neighborhood, her school, her two best friends, and the end-of-summer fair they always attend together. What she doesn't love is sharing every inch of her home with six siblings. When her grumpy older brother lands his own room, and her wild baby brother moves into the space she already shares with her clingy sister, Avery hatches a plan. Then the possibility of a cross-country move threatens to upend everything, and suddenly the space she's been fighting for feels a lot less certain.
Stealing Freedom - Elisa Carbone, (978-0440417071), Fiction
Interest level: 3-7, Lexile: 870
Ann Maria Weems has never known a day of freedom. She was born into slavery and has worked from sunrise to sundown her entire life. When her family is suddenly taken from her, twelve-year-old Ann has nothing left to lose. Her only chance to reclaim her freedom and find the people she loves is the Underground Railroad, a journey as dangerous as it is desperate. Based on the true story of a real enslaved girl who lived near the author's Maryland home.
The Baltimore Bandit - David A. Kelly, (978-1524767549), Fiction
Interest level: 1-6, Lexile: 610
Babe Ruth's very first team played in Baltimore, and the Orioles still display one of his gloves as a tribute. But when Mike and Kate sit down for pancakes with the Orioles' star pitcher, the glove vanishes. The only clue: a single gold coin pointing directly back to their breakfast companion. Clearing his name will require ballpark stakeouts, a surprisingly talkative parrot, and some serious detective work.
The Ghostly Tales of Ellicott City - Deborah Morgenthal, (978-1467198318), Non-fiction
Interest level: 3-7
Ellicott City, Maryland, has more than its share of restless spirits. This collection brings their stories to life with just the right blend of spookiness and fun. Step inside the ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute, where ghostly figures reportedly still roam the halls, or visit the Third Ellicott City Firehouse, where the shadows of a long-ago tragedy linger.
Tracks - Maria Grosskettler, (978-1735948102), Fiction
Interest level: 5-7
Twelve-year-old Natalie Carpenter dreams of following the old train tracks straight out of her small, memory-haunted town. When a stranger arrives searching for answers about his recently deceased mother, Natalie finds herself pulled into an unlikely partnership with him. Together, they race through abandoned train stations, dusty museums, a chance encounter with a famous actress, and a reportedly haunted hotel, chasing clues that could crack a fifty-year-old missing-person case and uncover a legendary hidden treasure. But the secrets they unearth may also be the ones Natalie needs most to hear.
Young Adult and Adult Books
Dread Nation - Justina Ireland, (978-0062570611), Fiction
Interest level: 7-12, Lexile: 870
Jane McKeene entered the world two days before the dead began rising on the battlefields of Gettysburg, upending the Civil War and permanently altering the course of American history. In this reimagined nation, laws require certain children — including Black and Native youth — to train at combat schools and fight the undead. Jane has nearly completed her training at Miss Preston's School of Combat in Baltimore when families in the surrounding county start disappearing, pulling her into a dangerous conspiracy that proves the shambling dead are far from her greatest threat.
Jacob Have I Loved - Katherine Paterson, (978-0064403689), Fiction
Interest level: 7-12, Lexile: 880
Growing up on a small Chesapeake Bay island, Louise has spent her whole life convinced she is the unwanted twin, overlooked and overshadowed while everyone lavishes attention on her younger sister Caroline. As she learns the rhythms of the watermen's life and uncovers the island's long-buried secrets, Louise begins the slow, painful work of carving out a place for herself beyond her sister's shadow and figuring out who she actually is.
Kindred - Octavia E. Butler, (978-0807083697), Non-fiction
Interest level: 9-12, Lexile: 580
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.” On her twenty-sixth birthday, Dana vanishes from her California home in 1976 and is hurled backward through time to the antebellum Maryland plantation of a white slaveholder's son named Rufus. Each time Rufus's life is in danger, Dana is pulled back to save him — gradually understanding that her own existence depends on his survival and on an assault she finds morally unbearable. As she endures the brutality of slavery and watches cruelty become normalized around her, Dana fights to hold onto her identity and find her way back to her own time.
Red Kayak - Priscilla Cummings, (978-0142405734), Fiction
Interest level: 7-12, Lexile: 800
Brady has always loved life on the Chesapeake Bay, but wealthy newcomers have stirred up resentment among his family and friends. When the DiAngelos' kayak capsizes in the bay, Brady suspects the accident may not have been accidental. As he digs for the truth, what he uncovers threatens to unravel the lives of everyone closest to him.
Survive the Dome - Kosoko Jackson, (978-1728257921), Fiction
Interest level: 7-12
Aspiring journalist Jamal Lawson arrives in Baltimore with his camera to document a rally protesting police brutality, and finds himself trapped when the city suddenly activates the Dome, a militarized lockdown that seals everyone inside with no way in or out. Stranded and alone, Jamal falls in with Marco, a hacker concealing his own secrets, and Catherine, a military dropout whose parents helped design the very system now imprisoning them. As the days-long lockdown grows more volatile, the three of them take their fight directly to the city's corrupt power structure, risking everything to get out alive.
The Hired Girl - Laura Amy Schlitz, (978-0763694500), Fiction
Interest level: 7-12, Lexile: 810
In the summer of 1911, fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs flees an abusive life on a Pennsylvania farm, boards a train to Baltimore, reinvents herself as Janet Lovelace, and talks her way into a position cooking and cleaning for a prosperous Jewish family. Told through her diary entries, Joan's story follows her awakening to the wider world, including its new technologies, its religious traditions, and its complicated social landscapes, as she navigates the uncertain path between the girl she was and the woman she's becoming.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot, (978-1400052172), Non-fiction
Interest level: 7-12, Lexile: 1140
Henrietta Lacks was a Black tobacco farmer from the rural South whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge during a 1951 hospital visit, and went on to become one of the most consequential biological materials in the history of medicine. Her cells, known as HeLa, helped develop the polio vaccine, advanced research into cancer and viruses, and contributed to breakthroughs in cloning and gene mapping. Yet, Henrietta herself died in obscurity, buried in an unmarked grave, while a multimillion-dollar industry built on her cells left her family with nothing.
Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland - Sally M. Walker, (978-1728424323), Non-fiction
Interest level: 7-12, Lexile: 1140
In 2005, a forensic scientist peered into a four-hundred-year-old grave and determined that the skeleton inside belonged to a European boy of about fifteen. Using the same skills that solve modern crimes, scientists have been piecing together the lives of people long buried near Jamestown and across colonial Maryland: a teenage boy, a ship's captain, an indentured servant, a colonial official's family, and an enslaved African girl, each of them reaching across centuries to tell a story written in bone.