Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Good read-alouds for 5th graders?

I am looking for suggestions for read-aloud fiction books for my rising 5th graders. More recently, DS/DD has been requesting that I read aloud to them. DS's reading lexile level is suppposed to be early to mid-college and DD is supposed to be late high school to early college. Obviously, their listening comprehension should be beyond their reading lexiles so the sky is the limit as far as reading levels. However, while I have stopped paying attention to reading levels the last couple of years, they have clearly read popular age-appropriate books due to interest. In other words, I don't think that they would appreciate War and Peace even if they are capable of reading it but at the same time I don't want to be bore to death.

DH likes to read the classics to ds11. In the past couple of years, he's read Dickens, a lot of Steinbeck (ds particularly liked Cannery Row and The Pearl), Twain, All Creatures Great and Small, a Japanese detective series, Kafka stories, Treasure Island and The Old Man in the Sea. I've read Animal Farm, The Hobbit series, Wildwood series, The Harry Potter Books, recently The Emerald Atlas series and the Encyclopedia of World History. Ds's Lexile level is also at college level so none of these choices is near his level but at least most of them are good literature...
Up on deck for me: Where the Red Fern Grows, Night by Elie Wiesl, Diary of Anne Frank, and a few of his dystopian young adult novels he's chosen from the bookstore.

Jules Verne, maybe?

This is a hard age that way-- and I wouldn't assume that listening lexile and reading is so dramatically far apart anymore at this age. That's true for a while, certainly, but by the time kids (meaning HG ones here) are into high school, not as much.

What kinds of interests and sensitivities (if any jump out at you) are you working around?

Dickens is lovely as read-aloud material. Some Poe is also nice. The original Sherlock Holmes mysteries are also good, and much better to modern readers when read aloud.

I still read aloud quite often to my son, a rising 6th grader. I choose things that he either wouldn't read himself or that I like to read aloud because they have good flow. We've read most of Harry Potter (I skipped the last one), some modern classics like Ms. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Cricket in Times Square, Where the Red Fern Grows and From the Mixed up Files of Ms. Basil E Frankweiler, and some books with girls as the narrator that he wouldn't otherwise read like Mango Shaped Space.

It sounds like you have no problem reading them age-appropriate pop fiction, but you're just looking for something more advanced as a supplement, as a way to help them grow, correct?

As someone who equates reading aloud to performance art, I'd be looking for resources that can be read in an entertaining way. So I would probably reject Kurt Vonnegut, whose tone seems rather flat and dry, and look for someone with a bit more dramatic flair, like Mark Twain (although his non-fiction actually reads better than his fiction). Others I might suggest are age-appropriate selections from Canterbury Tales, and anything from mythology that can be delivered in an entertaining tone (so not Ulysses, for instance).

I'd jump on the earlier Poe suggestion, because there's tons of performance art in there. Of course, assuming you're reading before bedtime, you have to decide if that's the kind of thing you want to read out to your children just then.

Thanks for the ideas. Dickens is good for reading aloud and they might actually enjoy Animal Farm. I think I can probably tolerate rereading those authors - can't say the same for all of them.

You are right that listening lexile and reading may not be that far apart anymore even though DS and DD have really strong auditory processing. In fact, for myself, I am sure that my listening lexile is below reading because I have certain auditory processing issues.

Sherlock Holmes is an idea and was a favorite of my once upon a time. I love Poe but he is too gruesome for DS and DD, who are really sensitive to violence.

That's exactly what I am trying to do - introduce some things that they may not otherwise pick up. They don't appear to taken with the modern classics, but I think I might try to locate a copy of The Mixed Up Files.

I am not necessarily looking for things more advanced, but I do want to see some growth - not so much in reading comprehension level as in broadening their horizon. Mythology might be a good source. DS read Ulysses and liked it but DD is more of a modern fiction sort of gal.