Children's Choices

Books Chosen by Children Across the United States

In addition to individual state's children's choices programs, did you know that there is an annual list of children's books chosen by children from across the United States? Children's Choices is a project of the International Reading Association (IRA) and The Children's Book Council (CBC). According to the IRA's Children's Choices fact sheet, the goals of the project are -

• To develop an annual annotated reading list of new books that will encourage young people to read.
• To help teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents, and others find books that young readers will enjoy.
• To provide young readers with an opportunity to voice their opinions about the books being written for them.

According to the CBC, "Each year, publishers submit hundreds of titles to be evaluated and voted on by over 12,000 children. Throughout the school year, five review teams across the country work with their local classroom teachers and librarians to incorporate the books into classroom activities."

Each annual Children's Choices booklist includes about 100 children's books that were chosen by children ages 5-13 from across the US. In addition to the Children's Choices booklist, the IRA also publishes an annual Teachers' Choices booklist and a Young Adults' Choices booklist for student in grades 7-12.

Annotated copies of the annual Children's Choices booklists are available to download all the way back to 1998. The Children's Choices lists are divided into three categories: Beginning Readers (grades K–2), Young Readers (grades 3–4), and Advanced Readers (grades 5–6).

I find these lists particularly helpful to take with me to bookstores and the public library. As you may know, thousands of children's books are published annually. Since there's no time to read them all, lists like these, of books children have read and enjoyed, can be very helpful. The division by reading level is a real asset.