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Any chance it's "The Green Book" by Jill Patton Walsh? I know they could only bring one book, and the green book was a journal (the girl is telling the story in the journal). They left a dying earth and went to a new planet, where they had trouble growing crops (they would turn brittle and shatter), the grass is shiny/glassy, and the wood is too hard to cut. I think they found a natural amphitheater at one point...and there may have been something involving large mysterious spherical objects on the landscape.
Does that sound right?

This was a story that was included in a grade-school literature textbook back in the 90s. The story (may have been a chapter from a larger work) was about a family that went on a spaceship along with other families to colonize a new planet. Earth was being destroyed for some reason, so these families were the few that survived. Each family was allowed to take a few books. The father chose the collected works of Shakespeare and the little girl took a blank journal. Any ideas?