Happy weekend, readers!
It’s time for another edition of Read Alouds, Ranked — the place where I share everything I read aloud in the library this month and why it worked (or didn’t). Are you wondering what I learn from reading the same books over and over to 500 kids each week? This is the place to find out.
Today we’ve got 7 books.
February was a shorter month in the library — between a week off for our mid-winter break and preparing multiple grade levels for our upcoming author visits, we read fewer total titles this month. We’re looking forward to author visits with Ben Clanton and Andy Chou Messer (K-2), so you’ll see their work feature prominently in this month’s lineup.
Note that I am not providing a plot setup in these posts. 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). For each book, we’ll discuss my general impressions of the read-aloud experience, the density of the text, the degree of agency kids experience in the story, and my final verdict on whether I’d read it aloud again.
These posts are intended to help you reflect on what makes a truly fantastic read-aloud experience and to inspire you with fresh titles to read aloud in your own classroom, home, or library.
This is another month where everything we read was a net positive read aloud experience — falling at the bottom of the ranking isn’t a negative judgment of the book. Instead, it’s a matter of relativity of positives.
Without further ado, here is this month’s lineup:
