Texas Topaz Nonfiction List for Grades K-12

Here are just some of the 57 recommended titles for grades K-12 from the 2025 Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List! The purpose of the Texas Topaz Reading List is to provide children, teens, and adults with recommended nonfiction titles that stimulate reading for pleasure and personal learning. It is intended for recreational reading and is not designed to support any particular curriculum. Visit txla.org/topaz for the full list and lists from previous years.

Updated January 8, 2025
Lewisville Public Library
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Erno Rubik and his magic cube
Aradhya, Kerry
Paper Book
This first picture book biography of Rubik's Cube creator Erno Rubik reveals the obsession, imagination, and engineering process behind creating an iconic puzzle. Celebrating 50 years of the most popular puzzle in history! In the hills of Budapest, near the banks of...
Mushroom rain
Zimmermann, Laura K.
Paper Book
What can smell like bubble gum, glow neon green at night, be poisonous and yet still eaten by humans, and even help create rain? The answer is mushrooms! From their hidden networks underground to the fruiting body above, mushrooms can do incredible things. But don't call them plants--mushrooms are...
My lost freedom : a Japanese American WWII story
Takei, George
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER . A CALIBA GOLDEN POPPY AWARD FINALIST . A moving, beautifully illustrated true story for children ages 6 to 9 about growing up in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II-from the iconic Star Trek actor, activist, and author of the New...
Small shoes, great strides : how three brave girls opened doors to school equality
Nelson, Vaunda Micheaux
Paper Book
On November 14, 1960, first graders Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne stepped into history by going to school. Escorted by U.S. Marshals and facing swarms of shouting protestors, they became the first children in New Orleans to integrate a previously all-white school, just ten...
Impossible escape : a true story of survival and heroism in Nazi Europe
Sheinkin, Steve
Paper Book
From three-time National Book Award finalist and Newbery Honor author Steve Sheinkin, a true story of two Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust--one in hiding in Hungary, and the other in Auschwitz, plotting escape. It is 1944. A teenager named Rudolf (Rudi...
Impossible escape : a true story of survival and heroism in Nazi Europe
Sheinkin, Steve
Paper Book
From three-time National Book Award finalist and Newbery Honor author Steve Sheinkin, a true story of two Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust--one in hiding in Hungary, and the other in Auschwitz, plotting escape. It is 1944. A teenager named Rudolf (Rudi...

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