Common Core State Standards Addressed
- RL.5.2: Determine the theme of a story, drama or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
- RL.5.5: Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.
- RL.5.6: Describe how a narrator’s or speaker’s point of view influences how events are described.
- RL.6.2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
- RL.6.5: Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the theme, setting, or plot.
RL.6.6: Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.
- RL.4.2: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
- RL.4.3: Describe in-depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).
- RL.4.9: Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., opposition of good and evil) and patterns of events (e.g., the quest) in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures.
- L.1.1, 2.1: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
- RL.2.5: Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.
- W.2.3: Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequences of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.
- RL.9-10.2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details, provide an objective summary of the text.
- RL.9-10.9: Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare.
W.9-10.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examin and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly an accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of conten.
- RF.K.2a: Recognize and produce rhyming words.
- RL.1.4: Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.
- RI.K.1: With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
Primary Readers (Grades K-2)
1. A Leaf Can Be.... by Laura Purdie Salas
2. And Then It's Spring by Julie Fogliano
3. Body Actions by Shelly Rotner
4. Chopsticks by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
5. Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds
6. Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
7. How Many Jelly Beans? A Giant Book of Giant Numbers by Andrea Menotti
8. Otto the Book Bear by Katie Cleminson
9. Plant a Little Seed by Bonnie Christensen
10. Rocket Writes a Story by Tad Hills
Intermediate Readers (Grades 3-5)
1. The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins
2. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer
3. Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amaz-ing All-Brother Baseball Team by Audrey Vernick
4. Dogs on Duty: Soldiers' Best Friends on the Battlefield and Beyond by Dorothy Henshaw Patent
5. Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson
6. I, Too, Am America by Langston Hughes
7. Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World by Laurie Lawler
8. A Rock is Lively by Dianna Hutts Aston
9. A Strange Place to Call Home: The World's Most Dangerous Habitats & the Animals That Call Them Home by Marilyn Singer
10. Survival at 120 Above by Debbie S. Miller
Advanced Readers (Grades 6-8)
1. Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert by Elaine Scott
2. Fire in the Streets by Kekla Magoon
3. Glory Be by Augusta Scattergood
4. Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America by Andrea Davis Pinkney
5. Lincoln's Last Days: The Shocking Assass-ination That Changed America Forever by Bill O'Reilly and Dwight Jon Zimmerman
6. The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine
7. Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am by Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis
8. Steve Jobs: Thinking Differently by Patricia Lakin
9. Titanic: Voices from Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson
10. Wonder by R. J. Palacio
2013 Teachers' Choices
Award Winners
23