Samantha Hagan-Lingad, the woman behind our book selection, joins us on this episode with special guest interviewer and Communications Director at UTR, Jessica Hall. They discuss how United Through Reading chooses books for our library, why it’s important for those books to be diverse, and some great titles that you can read to your kids and request from our library, especially for kids in the 4 to 8-year-old age range. Jessica even gets some advice on how she can pick books for her young daughters, and Samantha’s advice may surprise you.

Resources from this show:

• United Through Reading’s book list

• Llama Llama Holiday Drama

• Llama Llama Series

• Mo Willems books

• Berenstain Bears Night Before Christmas

• UTR book recommendations:

  • Books Celebrating Black Americans

  • Books Celebrating Asian Americans

  • Books Celebrating Hispanic Heritage

  • Books Celebrating Women in History

• Rescue and Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship

• Knight Owl

• The Book with No Pictures (AKA “The Silly Book”!)

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Veterans United Home Loans. Veterans United Home Loans is dedicated to helping Veterans and military families become homeowners.

In two short decades, they’ve closed over half a million VA Loans. But they don’t measure their success in numbers, they measure it in living their values every day: Be Passionate and Have Fun, Deliver Results with Integrity and Enhance Lives.

United Through Reading is proud to be a part of Veterans United Home Loans' effort to lift up military families and communities across the country.

• Download UTR’s reading app: utr.org/app

• Help keep military families reading by supporting UTR: Give.utr.org