The 14 Books I Read Aloud to My Girls This Year
If you’d like a printable copy of this list of books to read aloud that you can take to your library or screenshot on your phone for easy access, just pop in your email address below and it’ll come right to your inbox!
It’s been a good year of read alouds!
As my girls get older and busier, we miss more nights as they’re gone at various things, but we still manage to hit several nights a week and I absolutely love those nights!
I also read aloud quite a few short books to just Tally back in the winter and spring when she was in half-day kindergarten and was home with me all morning – I’ve included a few of those on this list that were longer, but didn’t include ones that we read in a day or two like Don’t Pop the Bubble Ball or The Secret Cabana. (Should I have included all or none of them? Probably yes. But what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t make your own somewhat arbitrary rules??).
Here are the books we read together this year!
14 Books We read Aloud Together
The Hatmakers by Tamzin Merchant
This was not the best start to our read aloud year – it was very mediocre in my opinion and I was delighted when we finished it. I can’t really call out WHAT about it didn’t work, but it never landed for me.
Glitch by Laura Martin
We made a STRONG comeback with this book which was absolute fun – time travel, history, and mystery. What could be better? I included this one on the Summer Reading Guide because we all enjoyed it so much.
The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty
This book took me a long time to really get in to but by the end I was glad we’d read it. It was one of those books where you feel like it could be brand new or maybe 70 years old.
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald
This is one of the ones I read aloud to just Tally and it was a delight. I LOVED these books growing up and my kids have listened to them on audio a million times. When Tally requested I read it aloud to her, I couldn’t say no!
Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and The Endurance by Jennifer Armstrong
I’ve meant to read this book for AGES and finally got to it this year. It was SO good – I seriously cannot believe this is a true story. It was just absolutely incredible (and another one that made the 2023 Summer Reading Guide!)
Sparrows in the Wind by Gail Carson Levine
I’ve loved Ella Enchanted for decades, but never found any of her other books nearly as good. This one was a gamble and while it’s no Ella Enchanted, it was very good (it’s a Trojan War retelling) and we all very much enjoyed it.
The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi
Unbelievably I’d never read any of these books. This one I read aloud to just Tally at her request and it was fun to finally dive into this series (I’d like to read the rest of them but haven’t gotten to it yet).
Hide and Geek by T. P. Jagger
This was a fun mystery book along the lines of Mr Lemoncello’s Library and we had a great time trying to guess what was going to happen before it actually happened.
The Doughnut Fix by
This one I actually didn’t read aloud – we listened to it together in the car over the summer as we drove around. We all liked this one (and it’s included in Audible Plus so it’s free with your membership).
The Story of Gumluck the Wizard by Adam Rex
This was a pre-school read aloud with my two little girls – we got a copy of it and they asked me to read it so we spent about a week doing a couple of chapters each morning before they went to school. Quirky and cute.
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
In the fall, I got the urge to re-read this – it is one of my favorite books from my childhood (and my girls didn’t really remember it because its been years since I read it to them). We spent lots of warm September evenings reading it on the back porch before bed and I’ll treasure those memories forever.
The Clackity by Lora Senf
This was our Halloween read-aloud this year and I was worried that it might be too intense (with a serial killer and a slaughterhouse) but while it was a little creepy it was never downright scary and we all liked it. Ella went on to read the second book in the series!
The Star That Always Stays by Anna Rose Johnson
This one was billed as like Anne of Green Gables and while I don’t necessarily see that comparison, it does have that classic book feel and I loved this story of a Native girl dealing with her mother’s remarriage in 1914 when divorce is very taboo. She’s also starting high school and coming to terms with the fact that her mother wants her and her siblings to hide their Ojibwe heritage.
Winterfrost by Michelle Houts
This was our Christmas read aloud this year. Like last year, I got both a paper copy and an audiobook copy so that we could listen as we ran holiday errands or worked on puzzles together (plus, it can be hard to get through a Christmas book during December when we’re gone so many nights for festive events!).
I’d love to hear what you read aloud to your kids this year!
If you’d like a printable copy of this list of books to read aloud that you can take to your library or screenshot on your phone for easy access, just pop in your email address below and it’ll come right to your inbox!
We read two of the same read-alouds! Here’s our family’s list:
*Double the Danger and Zero Zucchini
*The Republic of Birds
*The Ogress and the Orphans
*City Spies: Forbidden City
*Glitch
*Ella Enchanted
*Children of the Fox
*Princess Academy
*Minerva Keen’s Detective Agency
*No One Leaves the Castle (I did both of the last two as an October read since they both went over part of the month)
*The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone (we did this one on audio for our drive to Disneyland. The narrator does an impressive number of voices/accents).
*Willodeen
*The Swifts (we’re doing this right now, and I would only do this for older kids or maybe not as a read aloud at all. It’s too intense even for my sixth grader who loved Lockwood and I’ve just been cutting out paragraphs pretty regularly)
One of our favorite series this year was princess pink and the land of fake believe
Also we have started the kingdom of wrenly and the kids really like those too.
Thank you for sharing the books you’ve read with your girls, even the ones you didn’t enjoy. I only kept a list from mid August- December. Here’s what we read the last 4 months:
1. The Enchanted Wood (love!)
2. Mr. Popper’s Penguins
3. The Magic Faraway Tree
4. Little Witch
5. The Beast and the Bethany (great read but probably not a good idea for younger elementary… which applies to us… parenting fail)
6. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
7. Bunnicula
8. The Trumpet of the Swan
9. The Folk of the Faraway Tree
10. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever!
11. The Ogress ans the Orphans (really enjoyed this story)
12. The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street
13. Where the Mountain meets the Moon (also a good one)
So… did anyone enjoy Winterfrost?
My 10 & 8 year old son’s loved The Wild Robot trilogy. I can’t recommend them enough and we even gifted them to cousins at Christmas.
I love your reading lists. Please keep them coming!
The turtle of Michigan by Naomi shihab nye; Remarkable rescue of milkweed meadow by Elaine dimopoulus; everything sad is untrue by Daniel nayeri; a place to hang the moon by Kate albus;
Thanks for these great recommendations, I’ve just added several to our read aloud list this year. In 2023, my son and I enjoyed the following as read alouds:
*Judy Blume’s Fudge series
*A Place to Hang the Moon
*Unbroken
*The Boy on the Wooden Box
*Bridge to Terabithia
*Murder is Bad Manners, and the next three in the series by Robin Stevens
*Roald Dahl’s The BFG
*When You Trap a Tiger
*Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret
We also read (or, rather, listened to) The Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, and absolutely LOVED it. Here are a few other highlights of our reading year:
-All Thirteen
-The False Prince
-The Wild Robot Protects
-The Westing Game
-The Phantom Tollbooth
-The Horse and His Boy
-The Book of Three/The Black Cauldron
Grow Up Tahlia Wilkins! So fun and great conversation starters about when your period starts!
Here are our 14 2023 Read A-louds. Best ones are marked with *:
Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate
The Railway Children by E. Nesbitt (audio)
*Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard by Jonathan Auxier
The Boxcar Children Collection by Gertrude Chandler Warner (audio)
Bailey’s Story: A Dog’s Purpose Novel by W. Bruce Cameron (audio)
Sweep by Jonathan Auxier
Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein (audio)
*The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (audio)
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
*A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus
The Candymakers by Wendy Mass
*Wish by Barabara O’Connor
Firebug by Angela Morrison
My list is not nearly as extensive (working on changing that this year!), but a few that my kids and I got into this past summer:
– The Graveyard Book (my kids LOVE spooky, and this one was quirky and so multi-faceted. We had so many good follow up discussions!)
– The Princess Academy (while he may not have liked the name and the moments of sappy teen-angst, my son did enjoy the story line)
– The Princess in Black (my daughter and I love this series, cute beginner chapter books that are so fun!)
Would you mind me asking how old your girls are? Trying to gauge this list for my 8 year old (second grade) and twin 6 year olds (first grade).
13, 11, 8 and 6!
Fun list!! My oldest teens are too busy to listen when I read aloud at night, but they know they’re always welcome 😂 But with my two younger kiddos, last year we read aloud:
Bamboo Kingdom series
Sadako & the 1000 Paper Cranes
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Out of the Dust
Number the Stars
Daughter of the Deep (just meh🤷🏻♀️)
The Fences Between Us
Bunnicula (such a fave for Halloween!)
Birchbark House #1
Wingfeather Saga #3
And right now we’re reading A Place to Hang the Moon!
We liked The Doughnut Fix, have you read the sequel? (The Doughnut King)