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Storyline Online provides online access to children's picture books both new and classic. These are exciting read alouds by some very familiar faces including Seth Meyers, Lea Michele, and Terry Crews. In the reading of Chester's Way, a beloved classic, Katie Leclerc signs along with her co-star, Vanessa Marano, making the storybook ASL accessible. This platform provides audio variety and accessible texts when hard copies are difficult to come by. It is one of my absolute favorites for a quick scaffold!

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Elementary, My Dear, or Far From It is another teacher blog that uses their own experiences to support their viewers classrooms. Most of her material is technology based, which has been an amazing tool during the past 3 COVID years! She links many reliable online books websites, from YA lit to picture books. She also provides a variety of hands on story telling applications that allow student to tell their own stories. I love this blog because, just like Ms. Lifshitz, it is encouraging, exciting, and real. There's nothing I love more than exploring ideas that worked for others in REAL LIFE classrooms! The addition of online access to the tool kit makes this source vital!

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Crawling Out of the Classroom is a blog written by 5th grade teacher Jessica Lifshitz. This blog is not the mega power house of book lists that some of the others in this tool kit are, but one thing it is, is honest. Lifshitz writes letters to her readers and speaks up about the realities of teachings. Within her letters, such as "Doing the Work to Create More Anti-Racist School Districts", she provides reading lists that will help us take the first step in the right direction. I'm a big believer in transparency and Lifshitz provides that, therefore I will continue to return to her for inspiration and book recommendations. My favorite statement I have read from her, and one that might have inspired this entire category of my tool box, "Who will we raise in the classroom?" A constant reminder that we see these students as much as they see their own parents, if not more.

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The last category in my tool kit holds sources that inspire me to remember who comes into my classroom each day, the future. We can teach children to be quiet and listen, or to stand up and speak their truth. While these sources motivate me to be a better teacher, they also provide material and book lists that help students navigate a confusing and sometimes cruel world.

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Very similar in function and setup to the Baby Librarians page, Book Riot can always be relied upon to have a wide variety or credible and diverse literature. My favorite feature in the Book Riot kit is the access to many multimedia pieces. There is a collection of audiobooks and a YA podcast, HEY YA, that talks about important questions and updates in YA Literature. This website truly has everything and their summaries provide enough information to determine whether a book would be an appropriate supplemental read without consulting other sites.

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Erica discusses some fun and unique graphic novels and manga - both new and a little older - that she's been reading lately.

Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.

To get even more YA news and recommendations, sign up for our What's Up in YA newsletter!

Books Discussed:

The Girl from the Other Side by Nagabe

Squire by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas

Over My Dead Body by Sweeney Boo

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Hey YA Extra Credit: Am I the Villain?? And Other Important Questions in YA - BOOK RIOT

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Erica discusses some fun and unique graphic novels and manga - both new and a little older - that she's been reading lately. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. To get even more YA news and recommendations, sign up for our What's Up in YA newsletter!

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The creators and writers for Baby Librarians also act as authors for the equally credible source, Bookriot. Baby Librarians' page offers picture book/children's literature recommendations for everyone! It is one of the most inclusive websites I have found to date, being that these two women are dedicated to ensuring everyone is seen and all history is taught. A few of the book list titles: 13 Children's Books About the U.S. Women's Suffrage Movement, 11 Indigenous Canadian Children's Books, and 5 Children's Books with Dyslexic Characters. Students NEED to see their lives, cultures, and struggles represented in literature

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In one book review on The Brown Bookshelf website, website author paulahy writes, "Where were books like [this] when I was a young reader ... I already know the answer -- they didn't exist." In addition to celebrating African American authors, this website provides its readers with The African American Children's Book Project's Best Picture Books. These picture books inspire representation where it is lacking! These are classic stories of childhood, love and heartbreak, losing a big game, performing in your first talent show. Classic stories that African American students have previously not seen their own reflection in when they read them.

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We Need Diverse Books starts its blog with the inspiring idea of "[imagining] a world in which all children can see themselves in the pages of a book." Having taught in a title 1 school for two years, I was constantly discouraged by students' lack of interest in the books we were reading. And, worse, I knew that lack of interest was stemming from a disconnect between the characters and plots we were reading about and their own lives. I had books on my shelf such as The Hate U Give and Mexican White Boy, and they would ask about them. While I encouraged independent reading, these students worked jobs with longer hours than my own after spending all day in school. It came down to my classroom and what they ready in there, and, while I couldn't completely replace the curriculum (it wasn't an option), I could implement short readings, poems, graphic novels, and picture books to supplement the gap! Long story short, @weneeddiversebooks offers a wide selection of reviewed texts that allow me to make every student feel seen.

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These resources provide books from women, POC, and other minority authors whose voices are often put on a back burner in public schools. From picture books to novels, these pieces can connect students to literature who have difficulty in finding representation in classic literature, whether it be culturally, emotionally, or physically.

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Kirkus Reviews operates similarly to Funky Pedagogy in providing book reviews on ALL genres of literature from biographies and current events to graphic novels and YA. The blog is easy to navigate and the reviews are blunt and to the point. For example, the graphic novel They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, was said to be, "A powerful reminder of history that is all too timely today." If you want further information, or a more detailed review, there is a drop down menu with one provided under each rating. I appreciate this blog for giving the facts and leaving out the fluff.

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Funky Pedagogy is a blog containing book reviews written by English teachers for English classrooms! Their reviews are contained on the tab The Reading List Project. Each review provides the genre, a summary, challenging content, and, best of all, notable reasons for recommending the book. The addition of that final category makes the book review list easy to navigate and sort through when looking for specific themes or topics. It also helps to identify any books that might need to be avoided due to individual student triggers. As always, there may be a student that requires alternative texts to those required in the classroom; Funky Pedagogy is a good first stop when seeking a similar novel that doesn't contain the material the guardian is trying to replace.

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This one might be a little out of place in this tool box, but ultimately I decided it belonged. The main reason being that it is a resource I look at CONSTANTLY. There is something about the knowledge that you are reading a banned book that lights a fire to read in young scholars. The need to understand why a book that we are reading together in school, or even a favorite they've read independently, could possibly be banned. While this is not necessarily a recommendation list for children's literature (there are definitely some inappropriate-for-the-classroom selections), there are picture books like Tango Makes Three, that can spark a discussion around misrepresentation and misinterpretation.

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The idea of disrupting the norm, shaking things up, is always enough to draw me in, but since I've found #disrupttexts, I have consistently come back to check for articles and Twitter threads that provide disruptions to my current classroom required reading list. When first wandering through the website, I found a discussion on The Hero's Journey. What are the odds? I was teaching The Odyssey! I read the entire thread and soaked up all the ways teaching the monomyth was often heteronormative and patriarchal. In addition, these authors and teachers provided scaffolds to disrupt that message and teach The Odyssey in a way that did not treat half the population as simple temptresses, or at least acknowledged when it did. Since, I have found disruptions of Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies, and To Kill a Mockingbird. of

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These resources provide modern YA literature that allows students to relate, reevaluate, and restructure the ideas that are presented in the beloved English classics.

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While the NWP is mainly focused on the advancement of the teaching of writing, their writer profiles led me to many reliable sources for children's literature recommendations. For example, Tricia Ebarvia is the cofounder of #distrupttexts (another tool in my kit) as well as a writer for the National Writing Project. Tricia encourages teachers to explore different perspectives, or a lack thereof, in classical literature  and provide students with texts that fill in those gaps. She uses the example of The Things They Carry (which I happen to be currently teaching) and explores the lack of Vietnamese characters in a book covering the Vietnam War. She guided students towards the New York Times article "Our Vietnam War Never Ended". Above I have linked the tab on the NWP website to "Meet Our Teacher Leaders". This tab provides an overwhelming amount of material from a slew of reliable, hands on deck teachers.

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Stories

In our nearly 50-year history, the National Writing Project has sought to establish meaningful and long-term relationships in the schools and communities where we work. These stories provide a glimpse into some of the people and programs that make up our network and support teachers as they help young people write their futures.

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In our nearly 50-year history, the National Writing Project has sought to establish meaningful and long-term relationships in the schools and communities where we work. These stories provide a glimpse into some of the people and programs that make up our network and support teachers as they help...

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Pernille Ripp caught my attention with her graphic novel recommendations. Graphic novels are great scaffolds for students who are struggling to grasp minor details and themes, or just need a different medium to find interest in reading. Ripp includes a summary, age warnings, and (once again!) English and Spanish options! These graphic novels cover the topics of friendship and bullying, as well as heavier themes of racism, sexism, and ableism. She truly includes books that make everyone feel seen and allows reading to be accessible to all.

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We Are Kid Lit provides summer reading lists for kids of all ages and interests. Their lists are broken down into categories: picture, graphic, middle grades, and young adult. The list of books in each category provides a very brief summary of the book, and, with only a scan, the viewer can see that We Are Kid Lit promises diverse and historically accurate reads. My favorite feature is the addition of including primary language used in the book (English, Spanish, Bilingual primarily available), thus allowing educators to pull a more focused book option list for ELLs.

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#classroombookaday was started by Jillian Heise and encourages the use of a picture book each day in the classroom as a means to spark in-depth discussion. Hiese writes, "Daily shared read alouds for joyful and engagement, to support identity, develop empathy, and build community." Heise is reliable in providing books that explore many different lenses while maintaining relevance to the TEKS of an upper level English classroom and giving a voice to minority authors. The link above is from the "Latest on Goodreads" post sending praise to the book If You're a Kid Like Gavin, commented "...living our lives as the people we are is not a choice; it's a right."

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These resources provide lists of reviewed children's literature, including picture books, graphic novels, and ESL accessible texts!