Each year the librarians at the Orem Library pick one book to read as a community. This fall, we’ve traveled to the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina for The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharyn McCrumb. Click here to learn more about Orem Reads and to find out how you can receive your free copy of the The Ballad of Frankie Silver. To accompany the chosen novel this year, we’ve found 5 of our favorite children’s books set in Appalachia.
When I was Young in the Mountains
By Cynthia Rylant
Picture Book
The son of a Pentecostal preacher faces his personal demons as he and his two outcast friends try to make it through their senior year of high school in rural Forrestville, Tennessee without letting the small-town culture destroy their creative spirits and sense of self.
Books by Horseback : A Librarian’s Brave Journey to Deliver Books to Children
By Emma Carlson Berne
Picture Book
A young librarian rides a pack horse through the mountains to deliver books to children in Appalachia during the Great Depression.
The Rag Coat
By Lauren Mills
Picture Book
Minna proudly wears her new coat made of clothing scraps to school, where the other children laugh at her until she tells them the stories behind the scraps.
Navigating Early
By Clare Vanderpool
Junior Fiction
Two boys undertake an incredible quest on the Appalachian Trail where they deal with pirates, buried secrets, and extraordinary encounters.
Willa of the Wood
By Robert Beatty
Junior Fiction
In the late 1800s, a twelve-year-old nightspirit living in the Great Smoky Mountains despairs as homesteaders destroy her forest habitat, until a chance encounter with a “day-folk” man changes everything she thought she knew about her people–and their greatest enemy.
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