Research, Citation, & Class Guides: How to Find Basal Readers, Children's Books & Leveled Reading: Select Books by Level

Selecting Children's Literature

Looking for award-winning books or books at a specific...

grade level?
reading level?
interest level?

Deciding whether a book is appropriate requires research. These databases will help you by allowing you to search by levels, themes and topics, and more.

Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD)
Use this tool to limit your search to specific reading levels and more. Includes reviews of children's books--all full text searchable from 27 sources of reviews including The Cooperative Children's Book Center [CCBC]. Note especially themed book lists.
Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Located at UW-Madison; supports teaching, learning and research related to children’s and young adult literature. Note especially themed book lists.
Database of Award-winning Children's Literature
Covers 102 awards from United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, and Ireland.
Novelist and Novelist K-8
is a reader advisory database for readers of all ages. Search by grade level, subject searches, academic standards, and more. (Badgerlink)

TeachingBooks.net
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includes thousands of resources about fiction and nonfiction books used in the K–12 environment. It also offers multimedia resources such as original movies of authors and illustrators and audio excerpts of professional book readings.
Access provided by Wisconsin DPI via Badgerlink.

Additional Resources

The following contain frameworks for ascertaining reading levels of texts, as well as searches for books by reading or Lexile level.

Booksource: Leveled Readers
This book store/commercial website provides a number of reading levels for each title. Browse the Leveled Readers section to see sample titles at each level, or search for a title to find its level.
Lexile Framework website
Search for titles to find the Lexile level, or copy and paste a paragraph of text. See the LEXILE TOOLS menu.
Reading A-Z: Leveled Printable Books
The library does not subscribe to this subscription service, but the reader can VIEW SAMPLE STORIES at all levels without downloading.
Scholastic Book Wizard
Find out Grade Level Equivalent (1.0 to 12.9), Guided Reading (A-Z), DRA (A,1-80), and Lexile® Measure of books.