Read-Aloud Recommendations, the Fall ’14 Edition

This past August, like most Augusts, my to-read pile was dominated by a certain kind of book: I was mostly reading new books that I thought might work well as middle school read alouds. I’ve blogged before about why I love to read aloud to middle schoolers and the criteria I use when selecting a good read aloud, so at first I thought I’d already written enough on the topic here on the blog. But then I thought back to when I first started teaching middle school. I was incredibly grateful to find some specific suggestions of books that had worked well as read alouds on The Reading Zone, because not every great book translates into a great class read aloud. In addition, I’ve been noticing recently that even though most of the people I know who read my blog are writers and not teachers, the posts that get the most hits are the ones that delve into specific teaching recommendations. So in the end, I decided to share this fall’s batch of read-aloud recommendations after all. If you’re not looking for books to read aloud to a group of young people, the good news is that these five books are equally fun to read on your own!

1.) Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

Theodora Tenpenny is grieving for her grandfather and attempting to make do with the $463 he left behind. She has no idea what her grandfather meant just before he died, when he told her to look “under the egg” and said something about a treasure. But after she spills rubbing alcohol on one of her grandfather’s paintings and discovers another painting—a really old, potentially priceless painting—underneath, she sets out to discover where this painting came from and what other secrets her grandfather might have been hiding. I think this book makes a great read aloud because of Theo’s humorous voice, the opportunities for students to make inferences, and a subplot about the Holocaust, which will appeal to young history buffs. On a practical level, it also features a main character who’s going into eighth grade. That’s great for my purposes because it can be hard to get seventh and eighth graders invested in a book about a sixth grader (and there seem to be a lot of excellent books starring sixth graders!). I decided to use this book as my first seventh grade read aloud.

2.) I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora

During the summer after eighth grade, Lucy is determined to honor the memory of her beloved English teacher by getting everyone in her town excited about his favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird. She and her two best friends come up with a very unconventional plan that involves hiding copies of the book and convincing everyone that somebody is out to “destroy the mockingbird.” Thanks to the power of the internet, their plan quickly spirals out of their control.  This is a funny, fast-paced book that will be a lot of fun to read aloud. It’s also a fairly short book with short chapters, which is helpful for a read aloud. (I can only read a bit at a time, so it’s tricky to maintain momentum with long books and to find good stopping points in books with long chapters.) Since we’ll be reading To Kill a Mockingbird at the end of the year, I decided to use this book as an eighth grade read aloud. I’m not sure that it will encourage students to make a lot of inferences, but it will balance out some of the heavier reading we do with something that’s a lot of fun and it will lead to some good discussions about book censorship and the way a topic can go viral.

3.) The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson

This book got a lot of well-deserved buzz last spring during the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign because of its fabulously diverse cast of characters, and I think it would make a really fun read aloud. Jackson Greene is a reformed troublemaker who returns to his con-artist ways after discovering that the student council election is rigged against his friend Gaby. While it’s realistic fiction, this is the kind of book that requires readers to suspend disbelief in order to accept an incredibly corrupt principal and a group of incredibly talented, enterprising kids. I was more than willing to do that because of the fun tone, the humor, and the cleverly plotted story, and I’m sure middle school students will be, as well. It reminds me a bit of Kate Messner’s Capture the Flag, which was a very popular read aloud a couple of years ago. It’s also fairly short, and readers can make inferences as they piece together what happened in Jackson’s previous cons and guess how how he will pull off his election heist.

4.) Kinda Like Brothers by Coe Booth

Eleven-year-old Jarrett has a lot on his plate. He’s struggling through summer school, and he has to help with the foster babies his mom takes in. As if that weren’t enough to deal with, his mom starts taking care of a new baby…and this one has a twelve-year-old brother, Kevon. Suddenly, Jarrett has to share his room with Kevon, a slightly older boy who’s better than he is at everything. I love the way Coe Booth sets up the relationship between these two boys so that readers completely understand why Kevon pushes Jarrett’s buttons so much, but we also see how much Kevon is hurting and how Jarrett’s actions could end up being disastrous. This book has a lot of great suspense and tackles a lot of big issues, so it’s a page turner that will lead to productive conversations. However, it tackles those issues gently and incorporates plenty of humor, so that even sensitive middle grade students will be able to engage with the story. I’m not teaching sixth grade this year, but I think this book would be a perfect sixth grade read aloud.

5.) The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy

This delightful debut features the four funny and endearing Fletcher boys as well as their loving, often frazzled dads. I loved all of the Fletcher kids. The youngest, six-year-old Frog, is adorably hilarious, and I appreciated how the three older boys, twelve-year-old Sam, ten-year-old Jax, and ten-year-old (but younger than Jax) Eli, each have their own satisfying character arc throughout the story. It’s great that this book depicts a modern and diverse family, and it’s also great that the book doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard to be politically correct. It’s just a humorous, big-hearted family story with lots of great shenanigans. It would be a really fun read aloud for fourth, fifth, or maybe sixth grade.

Happy reading (whether aloud or not), and feel free to weigh in with other suggestions!