Gifted Reading Resource Links

Lexile.com — the website where you can go to find a Lexile score for most books. (The search function is at the top right corner of the page.)

Amazon.com — now includes Lexile scores for many of the children’s and Young Adult (YA) books they sell; scroll down to section showing the publisher and publication date, and if there is a Lexile number to be had, it should appear right after “Grade Level” and “Age Range.” Also, the sheer scale of their operation means that the books listed in the “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” sections of their webpages are often incredibly well-targeted and generally do, in fact, align with a reader’s interests. It basically becomes your own personalized gifted reading resource!

CommonSenseMedia.org — a nonprofit website which offers detailed reviews of movies, apps, video games, and books. Their descriptions are extremely specific and exhaustively list every single thing that could possibly be objectionable, so that parents can decide for themselves whether or not they care about that particular issue. For example, in a movie, a review will list the use of words like “stupid” and “butt” as well as genuinely adult language, along with the degree of product placement or incidents of cigarette smoking. If none of these things offends you, you are free to ignore them all, but at least you know what the book/movie/game contains and can make an informed decision! Their database is most extensive for movies and video games, but their catalogue of book reviews is large and growing quickly. The categories they cover for books include “educational value,” “positive messages,” “positive role models,” “violence and scariness,” and “language.”

Hoagies’ Gifted website Reading Lists page — a gigantic compilation of reading lists from library associations, librarians, schools, publishers, book award organizations, etc. Invaluable!

Lee & Low – The largest multicultural children’s book publisher in the United States, which offers summer reading lists for grades K-8, along with grade/book level correlations based on a variety of book leveling systems.

Cooperative Children’s Book Center’s 50 Multicultural Books Every Child Should Know and 30 Multicultural Books Every Teen Should Know: These lists are broken down by grade and feature books by and about people of color and First/Native Nations individuals: African and African Americans, American Indians, Asian/Pacific and Asian Pacific Americans, and Latinos.

Scholastic’s Book Wizard — offers information about Scholastic’s books; recommends titles based on other titles you have liked, much like Amazon’s “Frequently Bought Together” feature.

Some of My Best Friends Are Books: Guiding Gifted Readers (3rd Edition) by Judith Wynn Halsted (Great Potential Press, 2009) — Recommended again and again on websites and at conferences and by experts on gifted children. Hoagies Gifted says, “Roeper Review says it all: ‘…should be on the shelf of every school library, whether that school offers gifted programming or not.”  The quintessential gifted reading resource.  NB:  The Grayson School is an Amazon affiliate, and if you  choose to purchase this book through our link you will also be supporting our school through a referral commission paid to us.  You will not pay more when buying  through this link.

Young Adult Library Association’s (YALSA) Teen Book Finder app — keeps the past five years’ worth of YALSA award-winning books handy in one place for easy browsing on your next library trip!

For young readers, we love this printable bookshelf for them to color and track their progress!  We also know a few not-as-young readers who do this same thing!