Each new school year typically comes complete with a bookshelf’s worth of required reading. Depending on where you live, some titles are suggested by the state or school district. Others are selected by individual schools or teachers.
As a service to parents, Focus on the Family has reviewed many of the most-read classroom books. After all, once kids learn to read well, a book’s reading level is less important than whether the content inside is developmentally appropriate. Here are just a few of the titles we’ve reviewed:
Younger elementary classroom books
- Abe Lincoln’s Hat
- The Bears on Hemlock Mountain
- The Bravest Dog Ever
- The Drinking Gourd
- A Lion to Guard Us
Older elementary classroom books
- Bridge to Terabithia
- The Chocolate Touch
- Elijah of Buxton
- The Matchlock Gun
- Number the Stars
- Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
- The Summer of the Swans
Middle school classroom books
- Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
- Call It Courage
- The Pearl
- Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
- The Secret Garden
High school classroom books
This list certainly isn’t all-inclusive; you can find more reviews at PluggedIn.com/book-reviews. And Thriving Family doesn’t review only classroom books. Our index contains plenty of popular youth titles that we add to weekly.
We want to hear from you!
To help us better serve parents, we’d like to know which books your children are studying or teachers are reading to your children’s classes. You can send the titles, the name of your state and your child’s grade level to [email protected]. Though we may not be able to create a review in time to help you, your insights will help us expand our index of reviews for books that are currently being used in the classroom.
