The Best 4 Read-alouds for Middle School
It is so important for our students to listen to books on a regular basis, but sometimes choosing books that will appeal to our classes’ mob mentality is a challenge. Thankfully, I have found four books that never fail to capture my students’ attention. These are my go-to read-alouds. (affiliate links included)
Full Cicada Moon, by Marilyn Hilton
This is one book that I will NEVER cut from my curriculum. I have read it to my seventh-graders each year since 2016, and every year, my students go wild for it. They gasp, they shout, they bang on their desks, they hold hands, and they beg and plead for me to keep reading. It’s funny because it’s not an especially action-packed book. The author uses free verse to tell the story of a biracial girl whose mother is Japanese and whose father is Black. This girl moves to Vermont in the 1960s and learns what it feels like to live in a predominantly white community as a person of color. The figurative language is beautiful, and the themes of perseverance, equality, justice, and forgiveness resonate with my students every year. At the end of the school year, most students say this was their favorite read-aloud of the year.
I always love a good Gordon Korman book, and this is one of my favorites. Because Korman uses multiple characters to narrate his story, I read each chapter with a different character voice. By the end of the day, my voice is pretty much shot, but there’s an excellent audiobook version on Audible, so I may take advantage of that next year. This is a great book for modeling reading strategies during a reading workshop, and the humor gets lots of giggles, even from my eighth graders.
How They Choked: Failures, Flops, and Flaws of the Awfully Famous, by Georgia Bragg
I am so glad I found this book! I had struggled to find a good variety of nonfiction books for my middle-schoolers to enjoy, but this one keeps their full attention. Bragg uses a sassy, sarcastic tone to write about beloved historical figures in a truly tragic way. My students now loathe Thomas Edison with a burning passion, and it is so funny to hear them trash talking him long after we have finished reading. I like to pair several chapters in this book with old 90s history cartoons that over-glorify historical figures. It makes me so happy to hear my students defiantly challenging the characters on screen. Check out 5 ways to use How They Choked in this blog post!
Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science, by John Fleischman
Each time we read this book, I begin by telling my students the appropriate and inappropriate locations to vomit in our classroom. After that announcement, they are thoroughly hooked. My “tough” students love to assure the class that exploded brain bits are not that bad while my other students stare wide-eyed at the books in front of them. If you need additional non-fiction books in your rotation, this one is a lot of fun!
Let me know what you think, and if you post about these books on social media, tag #hookthemwithreadalouds and @distinguishedenglish so I can follow along on your reading adventures!
