I volunteer at a library where every book has a grade level sticker on it. I'll look today for some titles of fifth grade level picture books if that will help. Many picture books are high level because they are intended to be read alouds and not read by beginning readers.
So glad you shared this. It made me curious so I did a quick websearch on "high level picture book".
One of the results was a 2009 crowd sourced list on a public forum in response to a post from a teacher with a need for fifth grade high level picture books. A 2012 thread on that public forum crowd sourced an even larger list of favorite fifth grade picture books and authors.
Booksource has a list of 10 level Q picture books.
Using the
Scholastic book wizard yielded 4 more titles. Scholastic thoughtfully posts the interest level and grade level equivalent for each. This is an amazing free search tool.
Using Picture Storybooks to Teach Literary Devices may also be of interest.
After looking at some of these higher level picture books, my own personal view on the reading policy described by the OP is that as long as the students are encouraged to read other self-selected books on their own, it may be great to have a teacher helping kids with big concepts and new vocabulary introduced by picture books. There are different kinds of reading for different purposes. A very engaging, suspenseful story may have children reading eagerly and skipping over words they don't know. Higher level picture books may keep kids on a page a bit longer and encourage taking a break to look up new vocabulary words and engage in book discussion, developing habits of reading which they'll need later on.
Once kiddos are routinely looking up words and discussing/analyzing/processing what they read, they may want a book club or discussion group for other books to encourage continued growth in reading. This may be something the OP may wish to advocate for? If the school does not have a book club (or create one in response to parental request), interested parents may wish to visit a local library or bookstore to see what they may have or be willing to create.
