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What is Read Across America?

Launched in 1998 by the National Education Association (NEA) and guided by a committee of educators, NEA's Read Across America is the nation's largest celebration of reading. This year-round program focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources that are about everyone, for everyone.

The titles and resources featured by NEA's Read Across America include books that students can see themselves reflected in, as well as books that allow readers to see a world or a character that might be different than them.

Readers who feel included, recognized, and a part of the world are engaged readers. We hope that you'll be able to share these recommended titles-and many others-to celebrate Read Across America in March and throughout the year. We invite you to:

1. Read books with kids and use Read Across America's resources to daily promote the message there is room in our community for all readers. The world-and books-are filled with many different kinds of people. Getting to know them is interesting, exciting, and fun!

2. Use Read Across America to help kids enjoy and relate to what they read by linking books and reading to other experiences in their lives and on the school year calendar. When everything from your Hispanic Heritage Month celebration to the 100th day of school to the science fair to Memorial Day includes books, guest readers, activities, and conversation about reading, you raise awareness about the importance, value, and fun of reading throughout the year.

3. Make your community the place where Read Across America is on everyone's calendar. When people make the time to read with children, children get the message that reading is important. Parents, members of your community, and local celebrities who make time to read at monthly or annual Read Across America celebrations help motivate kids to read and celebrate the diversity in their community and our country.

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Read Across America: Frequently Asked Questions | NEA

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Launched in 1998 by the National Education Association (NEA) and guided by a committee of educators, NEA's Read Across America is the nation's largest celebration of reading. This year-round program focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources that are about everyone, for everyone.

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Read Across America Calendar

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Get students reading, talking, and sharing to build community together or build a movement to create change.

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Use this link to view the most up to date schedule

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Diverse BookFinder | Identify & Explore Multicultural Picture Books

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Are you looking for multicultural children’s books? We’ve got you covered! You can search our circulating collection of picture books (2002-present), explore our quick lists, then borrow our books from your own library through interlibrary loan. We believe that too many children are left out of main…

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Read Across America Resources from Reading Rockets: Book Lists, the shift from Seuss, and more

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Read Across America Resources from Reading Rockets: Book Lists, the shift from Seuss, and more

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Diversity in children's books is going to flourish when we are able to have it just accepted as a normal part of schooling and librarianing if there's such a word. So, one of the things that I would hope people do is to really integrate diverse literature into whatever it is they're doing.

So, when you want to read aloud, find a book by an African American, find a book by a Latino, you know, read Pat Moore, read Walter D. Myers, read out loud and read those books. When people are doing their little research projects, I often look at the bibliography.

There's the study of we use these books to do X. So, I look at the end to see the bibliography. What were the books that they used? And so often there are no books that from underrepresented groups that are a part of that project. I think that's something. I think you have to also demand, if you will, people, publishers, marketers will respond to a demand.

So, if parents go into Barnes & Noble and say I want to see books about X, Y, and Z or I want to see these specific books, that I think they'll begin to show up. With the book clubs I think they can certainly be encouraged to include more diversity in the selections that they offer the children.

But basically it's that business of being diligent about making sure that classroom libraries are diverse and that those books are not just pulled out during February or during whatever month we celebrate American Indians, October, but that it's a part of all year round, any time. It's just a natural part of what happens in the classroom.

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NEA's Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading with the theme: Celebrating a Nation of Diverse Readers.

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Chapter Books for Early Readers

Create enthusiastic readers with Magic Tree House (MTH) early chapter book choices for beginning independent readers that are fun, accessible, and help improve comprehension and the habit of reading.

Ready to use these MTH books and more in your classroom? Visit MTHClassroomAdventures.org for downloadable MTH resources or head to www.MagicTreeHouse.com. Eligible educators can join First Book's Network to bring new books and resources to the classroom.

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Let's read and grow together with 12 months of recommended books, authors, and teaching resources that promote diversity and inclusion.

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Enlighten Your Shelf: Diverse Book Finder

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Simon & Schuster has long provided a diverse publishing program for children of all ages. With significant contributions to Black, Jewish, LGBTQ, multicultural literature, and more, we look forward to increasing the variety of our program for years to come. It is our hope that Kaleidoscope will not only shine a light on the assortment of outstanding diverse authors and stories we publish but will show our readers that there is beauty to be felt, empathy to be learned, and enlightenment to be found within the pages of a book. We hope to inspire our readers to enlighten themselves and their shelves.

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For younger students, start with a book that has a theme everyone can relate to, such as by Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien or by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow . Then tell a tale about your own back-to-school experiences. Get kids to help you compare your experience with the characters in the book. Then invite kids to develop and share their own school stories.

Stories provide a key means for students to understand the world around them as well as other people. For older students, after sharing a book like by Tae Keller, have readers think about where they get their stories and who are the storytellers in their lives. What makes those stories memorable? Have students try turning a vivid memory into a story they can share. Get them to think of a memory and connect it to the emotion it makes them feel. Ask them to craft their memory into a story or poem that would evoke that emotion in others. What can they share that will help connect others to their story?

Take advantage of technology to conduct interviews. StoryCorps, one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, now includes the free StoryCorps app and StoryCorps Connect for video conferencing. Resources for both tools walk users through conducting an interview by providing all the necessary tools: help preparing questions, how-tos for recording conversations, and ways to share the finished product. Or have students record their interview as a video or using other web-based audio recording tools .

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All Kinds of Ways to Play with Stories to Celebrate NEA's Read Across America | NEA

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For younger students, start with a book that has a theme everyone can relate to, such as by Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien or by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow . Then tell a tale about your own back-to-school experiences. Get kids to help you compare your experience with the characters in the book.