Ten Not-to-Be-Missed Picture Book Reference Sites

Almost daily I receive an email asking for a list of books on a certain topic, or genre, or time period, or skill. Many readers of this blog first came here from Google seeking just that.

Fortunately there are some terrific sites out there that can provide teachers with basic lists of picture books, categorized in almost any way imaginable. The ten sites I've listed below will help you locate "the good stuff." Also be sure to take advantage of the expertise available through your local librarian or media center specialist.

Know of a site that should be here? Email me and let me know!


Dr. Sue LeBeau's Links to Picture Books

This nicely categorized collection of picture books provides a comfortable starting point for any teacher looking to incorporate picture books in a purposeful way. Sue has categorized them by Math, Science, Social Studies, etc. A site worth bookmarking.

Help Readers Love Reading

Here you'll find short and fun reviews of picture books. It's hard to keep up with all the new books out there, so a resource like this is your best bet. Blogger Brian Wilhorn reviews a single book every few days, and he seems to have some passion for it.

Reading Workshop

This site features a list of picture books that you can use to teach specific reading skills and strategies (foreshadowing,, predictions, setting, etc). For those looking for ideas for incorporation, and for those seeking specific titles, this site is an excellent resource.

Writing Fix: Picture Book Prompts

This site is packed with tons of resources, although for our immediate purposes I recommend the 60+ picture book inspired writing lessons (that's what I've linked to). You'll find some of your favorites here, along with complete lesson plans and ready-to-go printables for student use. All free! No registration or membership needed. Equally cool at this site, however, is the chapter book excerpts as mentor texts section, which enables you to use just a few pages, or a chapter at most, of a novel as a writing model.

Storyline Online

Famous celebrities read aloud from popular children's books! A fine and growing collection of favorite picture books.

Picture Book Database

A really terrific online tool that allows you to search picture book titles alphabetically by theme or topic.

Trade Book Matrices

Although it says at this site that these are book for adult learners, many of the titles in these downloadable Word docs are picture books. Books are grouped by topic (Westward Expansion, Civil Rights, Grandparents, Immigrants, etc.) and some teaching ideas are included for select topics.

Book Wizard from Scholastic

At this site, Scholastic provides a really valuable tool called BookALike. This allows you to enter a book title, find the exact grade-equivalent level of that book, and then browse books of similar reading difficulty and topic. What's even more useful is that you can use a "slider" to choose books of slightly greater or lesser difficulty. So if a student loved The Magic Tree House as a second grader two years ago, you can simply enter that title and then slide up two grades to locate appropriate titles for fourth grade.

Database of Award Winning Children's Literature

This database allows you to focus a search for both picture and chapter books as narrowly or as broadly as you choose by selecting such variables as genre, historical period, grade level, and even genre of protagonist. And as the title says, the titles produced in your search are award winners, so you can be relatively sure that they're worth a look.

All Together Now

A really extensive clickable list of themes, read-alouds, values, and topics. So many ways to search similar ideas, and the results are pretty complete! What's really cool is that the list is now online as a wiki, which means you can easily add titles to the list, thereby increasing its value to teachers like you! I personally added a list called Focused Reading Skills, and I absolutely encourage you to add your recommended titles.

Coming Attractions: Book Trailers

I wrote about book trailers at my How to Teach a Novel blog, and the response from teachers was extremely positive. Like a movie trailer (aka movie preview), a book trailer provides just a glimpse of the overall story, with plenty of visuals and just enough hook to draw in the viewer (or, in this case, the reader).

Dr. Mark Geary has collected a terrific list of picture book trailers to get you started. You'll find lots of new and old favorites there (for example, Tuesday by David Wiesner; Diary of a Worm and Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin; Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, and The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman).

If you dig these and want more, YouTube has several, searchable by name and (not as often) by author or publisher. Publishing houses offer them as well, and most publishers provide search functions to help find them. The Scholastic site, for example, has over sixty terrific, professionally published videos. You can also check out my recent series on Publishers' Resources: parts I, II, III, and IV to see which children's publishers provide videos.

The video below shows how music, movement, and selected text can create anticipation for Farmer George Plants a Nation, written by Peggy Thomas and illustrated by Layne Johnson.



If you're a middle grade or high school teacher, definitely check out the Scholastic site, and also take a look at 60 Second Recap, a hip new site which breathes life into high school classics.

Suggested Uses for Book Trailers

So how can classroom teachers make the best use of these videos?

• Book trailers can create a sense of anticipation for an upcoming novel or even picture book. A teacher can whet appetites for the next day's reading by showing a book trailer at the end of each day.
• By their short nature, book trailers provide a clear model of summarizing. Trailers may additionally provide models of other literary techniques including cliffhangers, foreshadowing, mood, pacing, and tone.
• Prior to the introduction of a novel, the trailer is an alternative way to provide a general story outline, apart the back cover blurb. This allows students to focus less on the overall "story line" and to concentrate more intently on literary elements. After seeing a preview for a movie, we often feel that we can predict the entire movie's story line, yet we go to see it anyway. Why? Because we want to fill in the gaps that the preview intentionally created. We also want to enjoy the visual elements, the witty banter, the twists and turns that the trailer only hinted at.
• When using a novel as a mentor text, a trailer can scaffold the overall story line. How is that different than the idea above? When teaching my students the importance of using alternatives to "said," for example, I assigned pairs of students two chapters from Gordon Korman's Swindle. Korman is a master at crafting realistic dialogue, and in one chapter alone a student found thirty speaking words other than said, and the word said itself was used just five times (and most often with an adverb). Although students only skimmed to collect the words, they still wanted to get an idea of the overall plot (some students, after all, were assigned Chapters 15 and 16, pretty deep in the action!). The Swindle trailer not only helped students see how their chapters tied into the overall story, it also encouraged over a dozen of them to sign out the book that day.
• Trailers can be used to build critical thinking skills. Allow students to compare the books to their trailers, guiding the discussion with questions such as Did the trailer give you the same feeling as the book itself? Do you feel that the narrator was right for the video, and why or why not? What did the trailer leave out? Why do you suppose those elements were chosen? For what audience is this trailer intended: teachers, librarians, parents, students, booksellers, others? How do you know? What would you change in this trailer and why?
• In some cases, students can even compare one trailer to another for the same book. This alternative book trailer for Swindle can be found on YouTube. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? Which segments from each could be combined to make a new trailer that's even better than either of the originals?

Have your own source for book trailers, or other ideas for using them in the classroom? Email me or leave a comment below.

UPDATE: My new Twitter friend Tara Lazar (@taralazar) pointed out that there's now a Kids' Lit Book Trailer Ning. How cool is that? Thanks, Tara. See? Twitter is a good thing!

Ways to Share Picture Books

Many teachers have emailed me since this blog launched, sharing their successes with the read-aloud approaches I've provided for books such as Enemy Pie, The Empty Pot, and the Holocaust. An equal number, however, have asked about general ways of sharing picture books. Some feel unprepared to do so, having never been trained in any literacy class in their undergrad curriculum. Others simply feel that their own approach may in some way be lacking. So let me offer just a few ways that picture books can be shared in the upper elementary and middle grades.
Teacher to Class Sharing

This strategy is probably as old as reading itself, and most closely mimics the reading experiences shared by many children at home with family (and for those children who have never enjoyed such an experience at home, what better place and time to start?). The close proximity, the intimacy of this approach, explains why reading picture books online feels so much less satisfying, and is unlikely to replace print picture books anytime soon. I would recommend this approach the majority of the time, no matter what the age group.

The purpose of the shared reading could be one of many:

Picture books allow you to activate not only prior knowledge, but also attitudes, beliefs, and misconceptions. Picture books then create a bridge between the student’s prior knowledge and the newly introduced learning. For example, a teacher reads aloud the picture book The Honest to Goodness Truth. After reading, the teacher says, “I thought we all agreed yesterday in our discussion about our novel's main character that ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ Yet this book seems to say almost the exact opposite! So who’s right?”

Picture books create common ground. Before reading a novel set in the Depression, for example, the teacher might read aloud or show several picture books which deal with that topic. One might be illustrated with photographs and eyewitness reports, one with captioned period murals sponsored by the WPA, and one with illustrations and a narrative by a contemporary author or artist. In just a few minutes, then, students acquire a shared set of images, thoughts, and perspectives on a single topic.

Pictures books help students to construct schema. A teacher wishing to introduce a fantasy genre might share a picture book which exemplifies six traits of that genre. Upon completion of the reading, the teacher asks her students to list the traits they noticed. And how best to confirm or disqualify these traits? Have the students read additional fairy tales in small groups (see below). Which trait are shared by all books? Which additional traits are discovered?

Picture books can make abstract concepts (such as life skills) concrete. As teachers we are expected to teach “fuzzy” character concepts such as cooperation, responsibility, and integrity. Where are those lessons in our textbooks? Here is where picture books can play a large role. Through picture books, universal themes such as patience, empathy, teamwork, cooperation, forgiveness, fairness, and responsibility are captured in just sixteen or twenty-four pages, creating a memorable model for children who still think and generalize in very concrete terms.

Lastly, of course, picture books help students develop the ability to "visualize stories" in their heads, a critical component of reading comprehension. Not visualize words, for that's simply decoding. Students who simply see words are often the students who read as if they're pecking corn from the ground. Students who can cobble those words into phrases which create pictures in their heads are the ones who will truly understand what they're reading, at several levels. This type of "mental picture making" can be wonderfully modeled by a teacher using self-reflective language a good picture book.

One last note about shared reading. I recently read an article stating that teachers are increasingly using picture books in the upper grades (hurray!). But the accompanying photo chilled me. It revealed students seated at their desks, in rows, as the teacher walked among them, sharing the book's illustrations. Please, I beg of you, don't do this to your students! Create a gathering place where students can come and sit on the floor to partake of the experience. Nothing special at all, just floor space. Once the ritual of gathering in this space is practiced, your students (yes, even your thirteen year-olds) will gather there quickly, and will shush themselves as you join them for the reading experience. That's the way it's meant to be.

Paired Readings

This type of reading usually occurs with a specific outcome in mind. In lower grades, paired readings allow readers to practice fluency and clarity. It also demands that readers are “attentive” at least 50% of the time.

Understand, however, that many students suffer in comprehension when required to read aloud. They are so concerned with the demands of meeting the needs of an audience (volume, clarity, inflection) that they “check out” from comprehending. It’s not uncommon for a student to read aloud an entire paragraph or page, and then have no clue what was read. So paired readings also need “checkpoints” for discussion.

Group Readings

Again, this type of reading should be chosen for a specific purpose. One purpose, for example, might be to establish common knowledge about a topic through its presentation in a number of diverse picture books. Students might read from a number of baseball picture books, for example, and then report back to the group on the perspective of the author in each.

In reading for another purpose, students will read a number of picture books containing the exact same print content (The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere) with different interpretations of that same content by the various illustrators.

Independent Reading

Students read independently for a number of reasons, pleasure being the foremost. But as students mature, they should also read picture books as models for their own writing. This makes perfect sense, as picture books are typically the length of student stories in the upper elementary and middle grades (and the length of writing tasks expected on standardized tests).

Students may also read picture books as sources of reference. A student seeking background on the Sioux tribe, for example, could attempt to wade through a difficult nonfiction text, encyclopedia entry, or web site meant for more mature readers. Or, this same student could access similar information through three or four picture books whose illustrations would aid in deciphering and extending difficult terms and concepts. When one of my students chose to read a historical fiction novel set in Ancient Egypt, I recommended that she first read The Egyptian News by Scott Steedman. This book provided her with not only concrete images of architecture and dress, but also a solid bank of vocabulary terms and a concept of Egyptian societal roles which would greatly aid her in understanding the intrigues of her chosen chapter book. This is an approach I'd recommend for many students' literary forays into unfamiliar territories.

If you need more particulars about the "how to" aspect of reading picture books with children, consult the experts. Not the authors of slick $40 "How-To" books. No, I'm talking about your colleagues in the lower grades. Ask around and you'll quickly discover who has the rep for using picture books well.

My kindergarten daughter is extremely fortunate to have a teacher who loves picture books and uses them well. When I went to pick my daughter up from school the other day, I wasn't greeted with the typical "Daddeeeee!" and enthusiastic cub hug. Instead, as I entered the classroom, I immediately realized that I was trespassing upon the magical spell of story time. Not that it mattered. I wasn't even noticed. Every little pair of eyes and every little pair of ears was trained upon the teacher as she read Michael Garland's wonderful Miss Smith's Incredible Storybook. But the children weren't transfixed zombies. As the story progressed they leaned and whispered in friends' ears, eagerly pointing at the book's illustrations. And as I watched, it occurred to me that this engrossed audience of diminutive scholars was behaving in exactly the same manner as my sixth graders that very day when I had shared aloud a picture book. And each audience, in its own way, enjoyed a total understanding of the book's word and picture relationship. Yes, teacher questions would later peel away additional layers of the literary onion, but at that moment, the reading experience was nothing less than transcendent. It can be in your classroom, as well.

I'd love to hear your own experience with reading picture books to your students, at any level.

Reading Skills List Using Picture Books

I noticed that many readers to this blog ended up here from Google after searching for "list of reading skills using picture books" or some similar term. Often it's a more defined search, such as "prediction skills using picture books." While I've certainly offered lots of skills-based resources and suggestions over the past year, I was never one to provide such lists. Until now.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I did a little poking around and found exactly what I was looking for. Nancy Keane (with the help of many others) created a wiki, organizing books by genre, topic, and value, as well as recommended grade level. It's an impressive list, and a great start.

But what many readers seek are "reading skills and strategies," and this was a listing I saw lacking. I therefore started a Focused Reading Skills List at this wiki. Already, with just the few books I've added, I can see that this list is likely to outgrow its single page format, but we'll worry about that when we get there.

So I absolutely encourage you to bookmark and share this page with colleagues. I also ask for your help in making it a truly awesome resource: please sign up for wiki spaces (at the upper right corner of the Focused Reading Skills page) and then help me edit the page by adding your favorite picture books. The whole idea behind wikis is that they're cooperative, growing documents, and this is perhaps one of the best examples of a wiki that would benefit from multiples authors and perspectives.

Email me if you add some titles or skills, or if you have questions about how to go about doing so. Through a community effort, we can create a pretty powerful resource for ourselves and others!