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“Why is the sky blue? How do airplanes fly? Why do zebras have stripes?” 

Children are born with a natural curiosity about their world, and their frequent, varied questions are evidence of that. Books featuring baby animals, how things work, snakes, sharks, and weird-but-true scenarios spark many of these questions and are a natural starting point for finding their answers.  

On Dr. Seuss' birthday, it's especially timely to examine what makes classics like his stand the test of time -- and in what ways have young readers evolved?

All books, but especially nonfiction titles -- complete with awesome, graphic illustrations -- serve as powerful vocabulary builders and provide key information that students’ eager minds gobble up. Encounters with new words and knowledge provide a solid foundation for students’ learning, first as a precursor to making meaning of the words on a page, and later as the basis for learning and retaining information from reading. 

As a third-grade intervention teacher, I am constantly on the hunt for books to help motivate my students to read, and to increase the time they spend reading outside of school. I have discovered a fantastic resource to do just that -- the "What Kids Are Reading" report from Renaissance.

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