The Reading and Writing Project has, over the years, offered collected lists of recommended books from teachers who also love books as much as we do, and can't resist sharing favorite titles with each other. We do not always know every title personally, and ask you to double check that no title on any of these lists will lead you into political hot water.

This year we interviewed wonderful educators across the country in order to develop book lists of recommended books. We understand the responsibility involved in this work, and did not put a single book on the list unless that book was recommended by more than one person, and unless these were people whose judgments we trust. The lists are carefully organized--for historical fiction, for example, there will be a time (say, Colonial America) and leveled books we recommend around that time. Similarly, the social issues list is organized around social issues and leveled books we recommend for each social issue. All the books on the lists are leveled, either with Fountas and Pinnell's levels, if those exist, or with Scholastic Book Wizard levels. If neither source existed, we noted the lexile level which you can use to create levels by converting this lexile level to an approximation of Fountas and Pinnnel levels (take those with a grain of salt). The books are all available through Booksource, and we're assured that their price is the lowest available for books of comparable production-quality.

The following lists have been created to support the different reading workshop units of study: Anthologies, A Special List of Mentor Texts to Use When Teaching Writing Which Also Make For Great Read Alouds, Books Students Want on the Shelves Now, Biography, Expository Nonfiction, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Multicultural, Mystery, Narrative Nonfiction and Social Issues.