Books to Read Aloud for All Ages
Spring break is over and the final stretch is upon classroom teachers. Get to June with a little help from one of these great read-aloud titles.
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The Great Gilly Hopkins By: Katherine Paterson When she arrives at her newest foster home, it is clear to Galadriel “Gilly” Hopkins that she is smarter than everyone in Thompson Park. It isn’t long before she decides to run away to find her “real” home in California with her mother, the beautiful woman she barely remembers–but for all of Gilly’s street smarts, things turn out quite differently than she plans. Ages 10 and up |
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Frindle By: Andrew Clements When he decides to turn his fifth grade teacher’s love of the dictionary around on her, clever Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a chain of events that quickly moves beyond his control. Ages 8 and up |
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Bat 6 By: Virginia Euwer Wolff Bat 6–that’s the softball game played every year between the sixth-grade girls of Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge, Oregon. This year there are two newcomers on each team: Aki and Shazam. The two girls find themselves on a collison course that explodes catastrophically on the morning of Bat 6, the day they’re been preparing for all their lives. Ages 9 and up |
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Because of Winn-Dixie By: Kate DiCamillo Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie. |
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Borrowers By: Mary Norton A four-inch-tall family of “borrowers” living among humans and co-op their possessions may be forced to flee their home when one of their own is spotted by a human boy. Ages 7 and up |
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Ella Enchanted By: Gail Carson Levine In this novel based on the story of Cinderella, Ella struggles against the childhood curse that forces her to obey any order given to her. Ages 8 and up |
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Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key By: Jack Gantos To the constant disappointment of his mother and his teachers, Joey has trouble paying attention or controlling his mood swings when his prescription meds wear off and he starts getting worked up and acting wired. Ages 10 and up |
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Bunnicula By: Deborah Howe Harold, the Monroes’ dog, tells of Chester the cat’s suspicions that the baby rabbit that one of the Monroe boys finds in the movie theater, takes home, and names Bunnicula is a vampire. Ages 8 and up |
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Maniac Magee By: Jerry Spinelli When Jeffrey Lionel Magee, a scruffy twelve-year-old kid, wanders into Two Mills, Pennsylvania, a legend is in the making. Before too long, the stories begin to circulate about how fast and how far he can run, about how he knocks the world’s first ever “frogball” for an inside-the-park-home run bunt, and more stories that earn him the nickname “Maniac”. This is his story and it’s a story that is very careful not to get the facts mixed up with the truth. Ages 10 and up |
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Shiloh By: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog’s real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs. Ages 9 and up |
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Holes By: Louis Sachar Stanley Yelnats is serving hard labor by digging 5 foot holes in the dried up soil where Green Lake once sat. But it soon becomes clear to Stanley that the warden is really using the boys to search for something very valuable. The story of the hidden treasure, along with the warden, Stanley’s friend Zero, and the curse on the Yelnats family are all part of a compelling puzzle that has taken generations to unravel. Ages 12 and up |
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Tuck Everlasting By: Natalie Babbit The Tuck family is confronted with an agonizing situation when they discover that a ten-year-old girl and a malicious stranger now share their secret about a spring whose water prevents one from ever growing any older. Ages 10 and up |
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Turtle in Paradise By: Jennifer L. Holm In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida. Ages 8 and up |
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Bud, Not Buddy By: Christopher Paul Curtis Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father–the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids. Ages 8 and up |
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The Witch of Blackbird Pond By: Elizabeth Speare Kit Tyler’s new home in the Connecticut Colony is nothing like the home she left behind in the Caribbean, and when she befriends another lone and mysterious figure believed to be a witch, she herself is accused of witchcraft. Ages 10 and up |