Finding Great Books

Earlier today, I was on Oprah.com searching for something about her book clubs. (It was my first time visiting that site! Anyway!) I noticed that she had lists of great books for certain age groups. This got me thinking about other great books for kids to read. This has always been a question that parents ask me and I always send home a list of some classic books for kids to read to help parents get ideas as they go to the library. So, now I have some websites that others have shared with me or that I have just found through the years. Here you go:

Since I mentioned it already, check out oprah.com where she has suggestions separated by ages from 3-5 to 6-9 and 10-12 and even some books for you. Check it out. (I haven't spent a lot of time on this site, but it looked like it would be great and helpful!)

Here are some other sites:

1. Caldecott, Newbery, Coretta Scott King and other Awards
2. This is another great list of 100 books separated by ages as well. Some of my favorites are here

3. This is a list of great picture books
4. For those of you in Utah, or those who just want to find other great books, here's a great one for you! Utah Children's Book Award
5. IRA Teacher's Choices
6. Orbis Pictus--NCTE's Award for Nonfiction
(Let me just put a plug in for nonfiction. This is something that we need to get our students reading ... especially when younger. Research shows that there is what is referred to as a fourth grade slump in reading. Kids seem to be reading on level, or many kids do, up until 3rd grade and then there is a dramatic drop. Some say that it is because by fourth grade, so much of what kids are being asked to read is informational texts and they haven't been exposed to it enough to be familiar with it. The more kids can be exposed to this type of text, the better reader they will become and the better prepared they are for the older grades. This is a topic for another day, but I just wanted to put in a teaser and hopefully a good plug for reading informational texts. Don't think that it's boring. There are really a lot of great informational texts out there that kids will really be interested in! Give it a try!)
7. Notable books for a global society
8. National Council for Social Studies Notable Books
9. Children's Literature Web Guide
10. Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site

I hope this is a great start to finding some great books out there for kids to read!

One important thing to remember. If you are a parent, remember that just because the books are separated by ages on some of these sites, doesn't mean that it won't be too difficult or too easy for your child to read. A lot of times the books listed are actually by interest. On another post, I'll talk about how to figure out your child's reading level if you are a parent. (This has always been another big question that I get from parents.)

Carrie