10 Book Recommendation Resources for Teachers

I love the unique challenge of students that are voracious readers in the classroom. You know, the students that have read everything. They are such a treat because, as any good reading teacher knows, they push you to think how to find good books of your students to read more.

Finding more books can become a challenge because they will read it all. Ah what a treat! Read on to learn tips on how to find good books for upper elementary independent reading.

Resources to find a variety of good books for upper elementary independent reading books.

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How Do You Find The Time To Read and Find Good Books for Upper Elementary?

The first challenge as a teacher of reading is to be a model for reading. You will find that the more you read and discuss books, the more your students will naturally pick up and read more books. It is like you are in sales and you are selling books, books and more books! This is a great way to find good books for upper elementary readers.

FYI: I only endorse things that I've personally used or have come highly recommended from my teacher friends and family and think they may be helpful to you. If you buy anything mentioned using my Amazon referral links, I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you.

So what is a time strapped teacher to do? Stack your time!

What does this mean? It means using your spare time more efficiently.

Love Your Local Library

I love my local library. I love that they have audiobooks available for me to check out. I love the Libby app. I love that I don’t even have to set foot in the library to check out my latest book to read on my kindle or listen to on my phone.

My library uses other audiobook apps as well, but I have found they are not as user friendly as Libby.

Checking out a book on my phone, or placing one on hold, is really easy. All I have to do is download the book and I am ready to read or listen to a book.

Stack Your Reading Time to Find Good Books for Upper Elementary Students

Once I have downloaded an audio book on my phone, I use the time I’m already doing mindless tasks to also listen to new books. This is great for times like:

Driving to Work
Cleaning the House
Going for Walks
Grocery Shopping
Running Errands

I will switch back and forth between listening on my car’s audio and switching to headphones while grocery shopping.

Over the years the practice of listening to a book while already doing a task I don’t really need to think about has helped me consume tons of books. Its also a nice relaxing way to start and finish the day commuting to school.

How to Find Good Books for Upper Elementary Students to Read for Their Independent Reading Time

I have a few go to resources that are good books for upper elementary independent reading students that I share with other teachers, parents and students looking for more good books.

EBSCO Host- Novel List

This is a database requires a paid subscription, but your local library or the public library where your school district is located might have a subscription. If they don’t you could always ask. I like the Novelist K-8 Plus subscription (my public library has a subscription) because the search features are really helpful for finding a variety of good books for upper elementary independent reading books.

I like the variety of thoughtful search options that are available to me as a reading teacher. One of the search options if the Appeals Factor List. It allows me to look for books including:

Reader’s age- (0-8 or 9-12 years old, and teen for the K-8 Plus subscription)
Mood- Bleak, suspenseful, romantic, haunting, etc. It allows for more specific searches when looking for humor, you can look for gross humor, funny or irreverent etc.
Illustration options- Picture books and graphic novels have a unique set of image/illustration qualities, from color and drawing style to the mood evoked by the illustrations. You are able to search from muted, photographic, textured, surreal etc.
Characterization- mischievous, sarcastic, unlikeable, flawed and sympathetic to name a few
Storyline and Plot- You can search how a story is told (first person perspective, multiple perspectives, own voice) as well as search for a specific type of storytelling plot ( 24-Hour Stories, parallel stories, non-linear etc.)
Character Identity- You can specify a search result to find a major fictional character’s part of their identity like race/ethnicity, religion, disability, and sexual orientation.
Other search options separate from the appeals factor also allows me to search for a specific theme throughout a book, an author of a specific nationality or cultural identity as well as other helpful pieces of information like the book’s lexile level, page number and grade level.

As a teacher these search options make me feel excited to search for books for struggling readers, come up with suggestions for kids who have read EVERYTHING, and create a list of ideas when I am trying to teach inference or mood/tone of a book.

NovelList K-8 Plus also has curated book lists like:

21st Century Classics for Kids Ages 9-12
For Fans of Beetlejuice
For Fans of Black Panther
For Fans of Bluey

A variety of options come up if you are looking for read alike similar to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Many of the suggestions were new to me. Diary of a Wimpy Kid read likes include:

NoveList K-8 has lots of customization options for your book searches helping you to find good books for upper elementary and independent reading books.

CCBC

Cooperative Children’s Book Center through the University of Wisconsin- Madison has been a staple in my teaching life for many years. This is a fantastic resource if you are looking for good books for upper elementary students. Each year they publish a best of list, with a discussion on publishing trends, in their Choices pdfs.

They have also cultivated a list of books surrounding a specific theme or topic from Picture Books to Share with Older Kids and Teens to Books About Bullying to Fantasy for 8 to 12 Year Olds.

One of my favorite aspects of this amazing resource is the work they are doing in gathering data on books by and about Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. They have been collecting this information since 1985.

“While numbers are important, they are far from the only important thing to consider when it comes to multicultural publishing for children and teens. The books themselves matter. And every year we see amazing books by and about Black, Indigenous and People of Color published. There just aren’t enough of them.“

– Cooperative Children’s Book Center (University of Wisconsin- Madison)

This is a fantastic resource that I could spend days just tinkering around their website extending my To Be Read (TBR) list.

Indie Bound

Indie Bound is another great resource when looking for good books for upper elementary students. Indie Bound is a network of hundreds of independent bookstores that share book recommendations and connects readers to authors. They have a weekly bestsellers list . . . another resource I use to continue to extend my TBR list.

I love to use the quarterly Kids Indie Next list to recommend to parents of the voracious readers in my classroom. Indie Bound breaks their recommendations down into picture books, middle grade and young adult groupings. I hate when children’s literature is lumped into one category. If I am looking for a picture book suggestion, I don’t want to see a young adult chapter book mixed in with the suggestions.

The Kids Indie Next List comes out seasonally, Fall, Winter, Spring,and Summer.

New York Times Bestseller Lists

The NY Times collects sales information each week from stores and online sellers. Check out this article about how The NY Times collects their data. This is another great way for teachers to stay on top of the latest popular books that might be good for student’s independent reading.

The Times has also divided up their children’s literature into more helpful groupings including- Middle Grade Hardcover, Picture Books, Series and Young Adult Hardcover.

I am not crazy about the Middle Grade name because I think it can be misleading for parents and some teachers to assume Middle School, which is a different age group. I believe Middle grades includes 2nd/3rd grade (depending on the book and the maturity of the reader) on through 8th grade. As you look through this grouping of books on a weekly basis, you can certainly see that it contains a wide array of books.

I like that The NY Times is tracking the sales of “Children’s” Series. As a teacher, the most bang for your buck is to read the most popular series that your students are reading. You don’t even have to read the entire series, you can just get started with the first book in the series- just to have an idea of what all of the fuss is about with those books.

Similar to the Middle Grade books, the “children’s” series is a wide range. If I read The Summer I Turned Pretty, I don’t think I would be happy with knowing that I was grouped in the same “children’s” group as Last Kids on Earth or Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Again the thing that connects these books together is they are a series of books written for kids of any age.

The series filter is still a good starting point. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that they are all age appropriate because it is a part of the Children’s Series of Best Sellers.

The Book Wrangler

The Book Wrangler is an elementary school librarian who makes amazing book lists which is perfect for finding good books for upper elementary readers.

He has curated an amazing visual menu of book, including many ‘If you like this . .. Try this book’ menus. The Book Wrangler shares all of these menus for free on his website. Check out his delightful instagram here.

Sunday Cummins

Sunday was a professor that I was lucky enough to have while earning my master’s degree. She has since moved on from teaching at the university level and focuses on her work as a literacy consultant. She has a blog that that would be a great addition for any reading teacher’s professional development. It’s her instagram account, however, that earns her a spot on this post. She does amazing work reviewing relevant children’s literature. If you are looking to expand your classroom library and mentor texts, she is a great first stop.

Pernille Ripp

Another educator with a great reading blog! Pernille has curated quite the variety of book lists for her middle school students. She talks with her students to see what they are reading and actually enjoy in her classroom.

Local Bookstores

Finally, the resource that is the most near and dear to my heart, support your local bookstore. They will most certainly support you. I am a lucky lady and I live in an area with thriving bookstores. As the Barnes and Noble dwindles down in numbers in my area (I won’t even discuss the disappearance of Borders Books), my local bookstores have held steady.

As a resident of the suburbs of Chicago, Anderson’s Bookshop is one of the local bookstores I call home. They have an amazing line up of author visits and have hosted a few professional development seminars throughout the year for teachers.

Local bookstores will staff amazing people who are readers and can recommend books you would struggle to find on your own. I love the assortment including the variety and the quality of choices that I find at my local bookstores. Get to know the manager, or if they are lucky enough, children’s manager of the bookstore.

While Amazon certainly has book recommendations and an ease of use that seems unmatched, please when you are able and have time support your local bookstores.