10 Beautiful South Carolina Books for Children

Planning a family vacation to South Carolina? Check out 10 beautiful picture books to introduce your children to some of the history, people and places (and even animals!) that make South Carolina so special.

1. "Carolina's Story: Sea Turtles Get Sick Too!"by Donna Rathmell tells the story of Carolina, a loggerhead turtle who washed ashore critically ill and was nursed back to health at the South Carolina Aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital. 
   
2.  "P is for Palmetto: A South Carolina Alphabet"by Carol Crane is an alphabet book that appeals to both younger children, with its traditional alphabet book-style rhyming poetry, and older children, with side stories that give in-depth information about the subject of each poem, from the Angel Oak to the Riverbanks Zoo. 
   
3.  "Net Numbers: A South Carolina Number Book" by Carol Crane counts out the many things that make South Carolina unique, from shag dancers to bowls of Frogmore stew.
   
4. "Palmetto: Symbol of Courage" by Kate Salley Palmer tells the story behind the palmetto tree on South Carolina's distinctive and lovely state flag and explains why the tree has become a symbol of South Carolina pride.
   
5. "Circle Unbroken" by Margot Theis Raven is a gorgeous book about the history of some of the most beautiful art made in South Carolina - sweetgrass baskets.
   
6. "Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave" by Laban Carrick Hill tells the story of a profoundly gifted potter, poet and enslaved 19th-century South Carolinian named Dave.
   
7. "The Story of the H. L. Hunley and Queenie's Coin" by Fran Hawk tells the story of the very first submarine - which was built in South Carolina for the Confederate Army during the Civil War - the man who invented it and the attempts to find it again more than 100 years after it sank off the coast of Charleston.
   
8. "Tales of Litchfield Beach" by Bill Sirmon is a collection of South Carolina legends, tall tales, fables and ghost stories, such as the Lizard Man and the Cherokee story of Skyuka. Of all the dozens of books we looked at, this was my kids' favorite.
   
9. "Champions on the Bench" by Carole Boston Weatherford is the story of the 1955 Cannon Street YMCA Little League team, the only African-American Little League team chartered in South Carolina that year, in the days before desegregation.
   
10. "Francis Marion and the Legend of the Swamp Fox"by Kate Salley Palmer makes history come alive with the story of South Carolina's most famous Revolutionary War hero.