Literacy: Picture Books For Fluency

There is a big push to get kids out of picture books and into chapter books.  As a picture book writer, I can tell you that’s silliness.  Picture books are not just for babies!  Since they are designed to be read BY AN ADULT, the language can be quite challenging.  Plenty challenging to assign to your third or fourth grader.  Unless your child abhors them, I find picture books to be a great way to build fluency.  Since my third grader reads only 20 minutes a day in school, a chapter book would take him FOREVER, whereas a picture book “rewards the reader” in much smaller increments.

So, here’s a list I’ve worked up of great classic picture books ordered by AR level, so you can judge their reading level.