Read Alouds, Ranked - No. 1

Everything I read aloud this month and what I thought

Hello from the first monthly Read Aloud, Ranked!

On the last Friday of every month, I’ll share everything I read aloud in the library that month, whether it hit, and what I liked about it (or didn’t).

Largely speaking, I don’t read aloud anything I don’t like, so this list is a relative scale of really good stuff (with one exception). Ranking my read alouds was an intellectually riveting process, though — among a cast of broadly pleasing read alouds, what sets something apart?

As I reflected, I concluded that books I ranked highest are the ones where I could deliver the text as-is and let the story unfurl, with as little intervention as possible.

Note that I am not providing plot setup in these blurbs. Rather, the focus here is on read aloud-ability in the context of group read alouds (as distinct from 1:1 read alouds between a parent and child).