Read Alouds

"As you read to a child, you're pouring into a child's ears (and brain) all the sounds, syllables, endings, blends that will make up the words he/she will someday be asked to read and understand. And through stories, you are filling in the background knowledge necessary to understand things that aren't in his/her neighborhood--like whales, or locomotives or the rain forest."

- Cyndi Giorgis, The Read Aloud Handbook

Read alouds enhance listening vocabulary, which pours into speak, reading and writing skills!

Book Suggestions from The Read Aloud Handbook Treasury

Picture Books

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Viorst)

Be Quiet! (Higgins)

Bear Came Along (Morris)

Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Bend (Alexander)

The Book with No Pictures (Novak)

A Chair for My Mother (Williams)

Clever Jack Takes the Cake (Fleming)

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Barrett)

Creepy Carrots (Reynolds)

The Day You Begin (Woodson)

Dear Subsitute (Scanlon/Vernick)

Ada Twist, Scientist (Beaty)

If I Ran the Zoo (Seuss)

The Knowing Book (Dotlich)

The Little Red Fort (Maier)

Little Red Riding Hood (Pinkney)

Lousy Rotten Stinkin' Grapes (Palatini)

Madeline Finn and the Library Dog (Papp)

The Mermaid's Purse (Polacco)

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (Burton)

Penguin Problems (John)

Pink and Say (Polacco)

Rapunzel (adapted by Zelinsky)

Stegothesaurus (Heos)

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (Steig)

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Scieszka)

Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak)

The Wretched Stone (Van Allsburg)

Sports:

All Star! Honus Wagner and the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever (Yolen)

America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle (Adler)

Baseball Saved Us (Mochizuki)

Brothers at Bat (Vernick)

Casey at the Bat (Thayer)

Game Changer: John McLendon and the Secret Game (Coy)

I Got It! (Wiesner)

Major Taylor: Champion Cyclist (Cline-Ransome)

Mitchell Goes Bowling (Durand)

Oliver's Game (Tavares)

Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream (Jordan)

Shoeless Joe and Black Betsy (Bildner)

There Goes Ted Williams: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived (Tavares)

Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman (Krull)

Early Chapter Book Series

Bink and Gollie (DiCamillo)

Cam Jansen and the Joke House Mystery (Adler)

Magic Tree House (Osborne)

Hilde Cracks the Case: Fire! Fire! (Lysiak)

The Infamous Ratsos (Lareau)

Ivy + Bean (Barrows)

The Notebook of Doom (Cummings)

The Princess in Black (Hale)

Chapter Books and Novels

The Bad Beginning (Snicket)

Bob (Mass/Stead)

Bridge to Terabithia (Paterson)

Bud, Not Buddy (Curtis)

City of Ember (Duprau)

Danny: Champion of the World (Dahl)

A Drop of Hope (Calabrese)

Dugout Rivals (Bowen)

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library

Esperanza Rising (Munoz Ryan)

Flora and Ulysses (DiCamillo)

Frindle (Clements)

Harry Potter (Rowling)

Hatchet (Paulsen)

Holes (Sachar)

Inside Out and Back Again (Lai)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Selznick)

James and the Giant Peach (Dahl)

Kaspar the Titanic Cat (Morpurgo)

Kensuke's Kingdom (Morpurgo)

Lily's Crossing (Giff)

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)

Lions and Liars (Beasley)

Lone Stars (Lupica)

The Losers Club (Clements)

Martin the Warrior (Jacques)

The Monster's Ring (Coville)

The Mouse and the Motorcycle (Cleary)

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (O'Brien)

The One and Only Ivan (Applegate)

Peter & Ernesto: A Tale of Two Sloths (Annable)

Ramona (Cleary)

Roller Girl (Jamieson)

The Secret Garden (Burnett)

Sideways Stories from Wayside School (Sachar)

Stone Fox (Gardiner)

Stormbreaker-Alex Rider series (Horowitz)

Stuart Little (White)

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (Blume)

Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls)

The Wild Robot (Brown)

Willia & Me (Gutman)

Wish (O'Connor)

Wishtree (Applegate)

Wonderland (O'Connor)

Nonfiction

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart (Fleming)

Bill Peet: An Autobiography (Peet)

Boy: Tales of Childhood (Dahl)

The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth (Krull)

Me... Jane Goodall (McDonnell)

Ada Lovelace: The First Computer Programmer (Stanley)

Attuks!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City (Hoose)

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade (Sweet)

Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman (Nobleman)

A Computer Called Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Helped Put America on the Moon (Slade)

Free as a Bird: The Story of Malala (Maslo)

Giant Squid (Fleming)

Mighty Jackie: The Strike-Out Queen (Moss)

Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero (Moss)

Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein (Brown)

Pop!: The Invention of Bubble Gum (McCarthy)

We are the Ship: The Story of the Negro League Baseball (Nelson)

Poetry

Cricket in the Thicket: Poems About Bugs (Murray)

A Bunch of Punctuation (Hopkins)

Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems (Singer)

Gone Camping: A Novel in Verse (Wissinger)

I'm Just No Good at Rhyming and Other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-ups (Harris)

I've Lost My Hippopotamus (Prelutsky)

Poems I Wrote When No One Was Looking (Katz)

Where the Sidewalk Ends (Silverstein)

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