Finding good books for your kids to read can be challenging. Over the years I've often referred to a number of book lists to help me find new reading material. Here are two of my favorites.
- 1000 Good Books List, by Classical Christian Education. This list is separated by general reading level.
- Ambleside Online Booklists. These lists are separated by year (grade level).
Sometimes kids have a favorite author, book series, or genre, and they are resistant to trying new books. When that happens, one way to encourage them to try something new is to find other books that are similar to their favorite book or author.
Here are three online database that can help you find similar books and authors for your children.
Teacher Book Wizard
This site by Scholastic helps you find children's books by reading level, topic, genre, or similarity to other books. (Click the image below to enlarge.)
Lexile.com
This excellent database allows you to find books based on reading level. You're also able to find out which libraries in your area have the book in their collection. When you visit the site, you might wonder what a Lexile measure is. In a nutshell, it's a measure of a student's reading level or the difficulty of a text. (Click the image below to enlarge.)
NoveList
This is a subscription-based database. However, most public libraries will have a subscription, so as a patron you will likely be able to access the database through your library's website. NoveList is another excellent way to find similar books to ones that your child already enjoys. Check with your library to see if you have access to this wonderful resource. (Click the image below to enlarge.)
How do you find reading books for your children?
I'm so glad you mentioned NoveList. As a librarian, it is a tool I should use more often. For history books, there's also abookintime.com and redshift.com. I've also taken the TruthQuest tables of contents and checked them against the online catalog. Whenever I stumble upon a series I like that my library doesn't have many of (like Smithsonian Backyard for science or the Discover the World series), I tend to go to the publisher's site (if still in print) for the titles to request or google the series to see if I can find a list somewhere.
Karen
Awesome!! I like Ambleside, especially for the younger years, but I've found books from the Veritas Press catalog (most available at the library) are more age-appropriate.
I wish there were a website that reviewed children's books based on character lessons that are taught or not taught. That would be fantastic!
@Ginger, not sure if this is helpful, but here is a list of picture books organized by character trait.
Thanks for the book list!
I love the resources you've mentioned. I just sometimes forget to use them!
A group of homeschooling moms (myself included) just started up a blog site to help give some reviews using a checklist we created. It just started, so there are not a lot of reviews up yet. But, that'll change quickly as school reading assignments start happening.
http://thebookguardians.blogspot.com/
All the moms are Christian and we came to consensus on what things we'd want 'flagged' for us to see at a glance. I suspect that most of the controversial book reviews will come from our household as we read pretty much anything out there that grabs our attention.