Where to Find Great Kids Books for Summer Reading

As a student progresses during the school year, they learn and continue to improve upon their reading skills.  As the summer progresses, some of these skills are lost as kids play in the long summer hours.

In order to encourage children to read more, it is important to explore different books with them, but more importantly to find books that they want to read and will like to read.  Basically, the kids need to pick the books as summer reading should be more about fun and less about learning.

In creating a summer book list for your child, there are many resources that can be utilized. 

1. Your school or school district may provide a recommended reading list for your son's or daughter's current reading level. 
2. For those taking honors English or advanced language arts classes next year, the teacher may provide a required reading list.
3. Most local libraries have reading lists by grade level, and if not, ask your librarian to recommend a book for you.
4. Below are lists of books by grade levels that I have put together as my kids read during the year.
5. If you are still looking for books to read, look at this page which has captured many Award Winning Books for Children.

If you still don't have an idea of what kind of books to read this summer, look at your child's interests in sports, music, video games, and collections.

In addition to books, there are other reading options.  Magazines provide a way to focus in on a specific topic like camping, cars, and scouts.  For every sport, there are half a dozen magazine titles to choose from, you just need to subscribe to one of them.

Comic books are another way to encourage reading over the summer.  The nice things about comic books are that kids don't even know they are reading, it's more like a lot of fun.  There are classic comic books like Superman, Batman, Hulk, and other super heroes.  And then there are the more recent comic books like Pokeman, Yugioh, and others.

Other options are to find reading materials on the internet, such as blogs, or websites that have games that deal with reading.

My last thought on summer reading, is to stay engaged with your son or daughter.  Ask them questions about the book, what did they like or dislike about a book, who were the main characters, what decisions did the characters have to make, or what was the setting of the book.  Once you know a book's setting, it may be possible to take them on a trip to try and recreate that setting.