Help your Child Find the Right Book!

April 23, 2017 admin More Books

Help Your Child Find a Book They’ll Love

These are my best strategies to help your child find the right book. There are so many opinions on different ways to get kids to read! Many suggestions are mentioned throughout my website. This is a very specific list to help your child find the right book that they’ll read and like (and even better, LOVE)! There’s nothing more frustrating than when you’ve bought a book for your child or you have spent a lot of time at the library picking out a book and you get home and the book sits there!!! Ugh!

I have my own list of book suggestions, but the book you pick out should be your child’s choice (especially if you think that your child is a reluctant reader).

Your best bet to helping your child find the right book is to ask them some questions! Find out what book they want and then either find that book or let them find another book. Keep this list of questions on hand as it is good to have some strategies to help find a book that your child will read and enjoy reading!

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Here are some ways to help your child find the right book to read:

1. Ask your child what was the last book that they read and liked.
2. Ask your child if the last book that they liked was a book in a series, you can look for the next book in the series.
3. You can ask your child the name of their favorite author and then you could look for books by the same author.
4. If your child likes a specific genre you could look for another book in the same genre (horror, funny, mysteries, realistic fiction, historical fiction, etc.)

5. If your child says they don’t remember or they don’t have one, ask if they have a list at their school of books that they wanted to read. Most classes have “book lists” or their librarian has one (I have a list for each child, grades 3-5 in my library).
6. Ask your child if they’d like to look for a book using their public library online catalog, the online catalog at a bookstore or their school online catalog. Online catalogs can be searched in a variety of ways and just might have different titles, authors, series, etc. that your child will be interested in reading. You can type in a specific genre, author, themes, etc. and the list of books will be generated.

7. You can ask if a teacher, librarian, or friend has recommended any books.
8. Just explore the different books at the bookstore or library and make a written list or type the list on your list on your phone.

9. Have your child go to my book list and click on the titles that look interesting. If you click on the book cover of my blog, you usually can read the first page of the book so you can see if it’s a good match for your child.
10. In addition to my book lists by genre, check out these websites that have great book suggestions:
What Should I Read Next
KidsReads
Spaghetti Book Club

And this is a great guideline to make sure that the book your child is reading is at their correct reading level, but it is totally fine for your child to read some books that are above their reading level:

The five-finger rule:

Read the first page of the book and:

- Put a finger up for every word you don’t know.
- If you have 0 or 1 fingers up after reading the page, it’s too easy.
- If you have 2 or 3 fingers up after reading the page, it’s just right.
- If you have 4 fingers up after reading the page, it’s very challenging.
- If you have 5 or more fingers up after reading the page, it’s too hard.

And Check Out These Recommended Books on My Genre Pages:

And check out these other pages and posts:

I hope that these ideas will help your child find the right book! As always, please let me know if you have any questions or comments below. You can also email me at jean@reading-love.com or reading-love.com. I’d love to hear from you!