Recommended Summer Reading

We encourage you to make reading a part of your family’s summer. A regular habit of reading promotes fluency. Good books offer far more. They cultivate a child’s affections, stir their imaginations, and instill a deep love of learning.

A few suggestions to help with summer reading:

  • Have a set time each day for reading.

  • Choose “good” books and topics that stir the imagination.

  • Ask thoughtful questions to spark discussions about the book.

  • Have your child choose an interesting passage to read to the rest of the family.

  • Read portions of the book with your child.

  • Visit the library to explore books of interest

  • Read to your child books that have rich language

Incoming Kindergarten Students

  • Read rhyming books with your child (example: Cat in the Hat Beginning Reader books).

  • Begin reading classic nursery rhymes and fairy tales to your child (e.g., A Treasury of More than
    300 Classic Nursery Rhymes    , and Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes by Robert Frederick).

  • Any Cat in the Hat Beginning Reader book, written by Dr. Seuss and others, such as The Cat in
    the Hat    ; Green Eggs and Ham; Hop on Pop; Put Me in the Zoo; One Fish, Two Fish

  • Books by A.A. Milne (e.g., Winnie the Pooh) and Beatrix Potter (e.g., Peter Rabbit)

    1st Grade

  • Any Cat in the Hat Beginning Reader book, written by Dr. Seuss and others

  • Books by Beatrix Potter (e.g., The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, The Tale of Tom Kitten, The Tale of
    Jemima Puddle-Duck    )

  • Books and poems by A.A. Milne, such as Winnie the Pooh, “Now We Are Six,” and “When We
    Were Very Young”

  • Books by Syd Hoff

  • The Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel

  • Curious George books by H.A. Rey

  • Amelia Bedelia books by Peggy Parish

  • Corduroy by Don Freeman

  • Mother Goose and Other Traditional Poems/Stories and American Folk Legends (e.g., Johnny
    Appleseed) [*use classical editions, not modern adaptations]

  • Aesop’s Fables (e.g., “The Tortoise and The Hare,” “The Ant the Grasshopper,” “The Boy Who
    Cried Wolf”)

  • Stories and fairy tales (e.g., “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Three Little Pigs,” “Goldilocks,”
    “The Ugly Duckling,” “Cinderella,” etc.)

    2nd Grade

  • Roxaboxen by Barbra Cooney

  • Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House) by Mary Pope Osborne

  • Traditional fairy tales, tall tales, folk tales of your choice (e.g., “Hansel and Gretel,” “Jack and
    the Beanstalk,” “The Pied Piper,” “Pinocchio,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “Puss in Boots,”
    “Rapunzel,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Sleeping Beauty”)

  • Stories by Hans Christian Andersen (e.g., “Little Mermaid,” “Thumbelina”)

  • Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

  • DK Eyewitness Books: Ancient Greece by Anne Pearson

  • Books by Tomie de Paola

  • Magic School Bus books about weather, magnets, tools, the body, insects, animals, plants

  • Books from the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

    3rd Grade

  • Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard Atwater

  • Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House) by Mary Pope Osborne

  • Greek myths (e.g., Prometheus, Pandora, Theseus and the Minotaur, Swift-footed Atalanta,
    Hercules)

  • Traditional fairy tales, tall tales, folk tales of your choice (e.g., Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Pecos
    Bill)

  • Stories by Hans Christian Andersen (e.g., “Little Mermaid,” “Thumbelina”)

  • Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

  • Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

  • DK Eyewitness Books: Ancient Rome by Simon James

  • Magic School Bus books about weather, magnets, tools, the body, insects, animals, plants

    • Books from the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

      4th Grade

• The Narnia series by C. S. Lewis
• Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George? by Jean Fritz
• The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Graheme
• The Sword in the Tree by Clyde Robert Bulla
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Tales from The Arabian Nights (especially “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” • Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods or Farmer Boy

5th Grade

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett • The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood
• Heidi by Johanna Spyri
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (try the original version, may need adapted) • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
• “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Longfellow
• Legends of King Arthur

6th Grade

• Greek Myths by Olivia Coolidge
• Herodotus and the Road to History by Jeanne Bendic
• Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendic
• Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (various cases) • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott