
Now Read City USA's Tails and Tales, our million hour reading expedition, trains its focus on local habitats. Much of the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee is in the conifer zone, where the climate and environment, due to the high altitude, contains trees commonly associated with more northern climates, such as firs, spruce, and hemlock. The area's topographical complexity of peaks, ridges, valleys, and coves creates a setting for a wide variety of plant life, including some 1,300 species of flowering plant and 131 species of trees. Animals in East Tennessee are largely characteristic of high elevation (mountain) ecosystems, forest ecosystems, freshwater ecosystems, and cave ecosystems. Animals found in East Tennessee include bats, chipmunks, foxes, bobcats, black bears, salamanders, raccoons, and opossums.
Join us as we explore the region! This book list highlights the animals and habitats of East Tennessee, and the people who encounter them.
Juvenile
- Appleblossom the Possum by Holly Goldberg Sloan (Juvenile Fiction)
- The Bat Book by Charlotte Milner (Juvenile Nonfiction)
- Black Bears (Juvenile Nonfiction)
- Bobcats by Jennifer L. Marks (Juvenile Nonfiction)
- Fox Explores the Night by Martin Jenkins (Easy-Picture Book)
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park by Lisa M. Herrington (Juvenile Nonfiction)
- I Want That Nut! by Madeline Valentine (Easy-Picture Book)
- Possum and the Summer Storm by Anne Hunter (Easy-Picture Book)
- Salamander Dance by David FitzSimmons (Juvenile Nonfiction)
- The Secret Life of the Red Fox by Laurence Pringle (Juvenile Nonfiction)
Teen
- Be Not Far From Me by Wendy McGinnis
- Glow of the Fireflies by Lindsey Duga
- Lonely Planet: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
- A Sky for Us Alone by Kristen Russell
- Something Wicked by Alan Gratz
Adult Fiction
- A Death in the Family by James Agee
- Body Farm series by Jefferson Bass
- The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe
- The Homesteads by Loletta Clouse
- Long Man by Amy Green
- The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
- Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
- Christy by Catherine Marshall
- Happy Valley by Lin Stepp
Adult Nonfiction
- Death's Acre by William M. Bass
- Discovering October Roads: Fall Colors and Geology in Rural East Tennessee by Harry Moore
- TVA and the Dispossessed by Michael J. McDonald and John Muldowny