Summer Reading List

Essential Summer Reading for Students entering JK:
The focus is on family read-aloud books. Students should be familiar with nursery rhymes, such as a “Mother Goose” collection (e.g. one illustrated by Tasha Tudor or Richard Scarry). Aesop’s Fables (e.g. Milo Winter’s version) are also recommended.

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
Each Peach Pear Plum (Ahlberg)
Mossy (Brett) (A)
Fireflies! (Brinckloe)
The Important Book (Wise Brown) (A)
Old Mother West Wind (Burgess) (+)
The Little House (Burton)
Stellaluna (Cannon)
Pancakes, Pancakes! (Carle) (A)
One-Dog Canoe (Casanova)
Hattie and the Fox (Fox)
The Monkey and the Crocodile (Galdone) (A)
Ox-Cart Man (Hall)
Uncle Remus (Harris)
Dogger (Hughes)
The Wind Blew (Hutchins) (A)
Hush! A Thai Lullaby (Minfong)
Whistle for Willie (Keats) (A)
Inch By Inch (Lionni) (A)
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (Martin and Archambault)
Over and Under the Pond (Messner)
Winnie-the-Pooh (Milne) (A) (+)
Tikki Tikki Tembo (Mosel)
The Little Engine That Could (Piper)
The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Potter) (A) (+)
Curious George (Rey) (+)
Thy Friend, Obadiah (Turkle) (+)
The Circus Ship (Van Dusen) (A)
Harry and the Dirty Dog (Zene) (A)

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering SK:
The focus is on family read-aloud books. Students who attended JK at WCCA would be familiar with the books below. Choose several to enjoy over the summer:

Madeline (Bemelmans)
Gingerbread Friends (Brett)
Mother’s Day Mice (Brett)
Katy and the Big Snow Day (Burton)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle)
The Little Rabbit (Dunn)
Play With Me (Etts)
Corduroy (Freeman)
Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening (Frost, Jeffers)
The Nutcracker (Jeffers)
Ask Mr. Bear (Flack)
Angus Lost (Flack)
The Story about Ping (Flack)
A Rainbow of My Own (Freeman)
ABC Bunny (Gang)
In the Middle of the Fall (Henkes)
The Snowy Day (Keats)
The Carrot Seed (Krauss)
Blueberries for Sal (McClosky)
Lentil (McClosky)
My Little Book of Painted Turtles (Marston)
Katie and the Sunflowers (Mayhew)
A Poppy is to Remember (Patterson)
How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World (Priceman)
The Big Green Pocketbook (Ransom)
We’re Going On a Bear Hunt (Rosen and Oxbury)
Sakura and the Cherry Blossoms (Weston)
Jessie Bear, What Will You Wear? (White Carlstrom)
Goodnight Moon (Wise Brown)

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering SK (select from the following to read to your child):
Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come (Carlson)
Countdown to Kindergarten (McGhee)
I Can Tie My Own Shoelaces (Oakley)
The Kissing Hand (Penn)
The Night Before Kindergarten (Wing)

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
The Story of Little Babaji (Bannerman)
Spring Story (Barklem) (+)
Hedgie’s Surprise (Brett) (A)
Grandmother and I (Buckley)
Maybelle the Cable Car (Burton) (A)
May I Bring A Friend? (De Regniers)
Mercy Watson to the Rescue (DiCamillo) (A)
Petunia (Duvoisin)
Angus and the Ducks (Flack) (A)
Benjy’s Dog House (Graham) (+)
Little Toot (Gramatky) (+)
The Big Snow (Hader)
Floss (Lewis) (+)
George and Martha (Marshall) (+)
A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog (Mayer)
Flossie and the Fox (McKissack)
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt (Messner)
Thunder Cake (Polacco)
Dr. De Soto (Steig)
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (Steig)
A Chair for My Mother (Williams)
Quick as a Cricket (Wood)

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering Grade 1: 
We do not expect reading fluency at this point. Your young reader may require some assistance decoding words, which is to be expected after the SK year. Consider helping your child read through some of these books that our current SK students would have enjoyed in class:

Miss Rumphius (Cooney)
Cranberry Thanksgiving (Devlin)
A Day at the Sugar Bush (Faulkner) 
Make Way for Ducklings (McCloskey)
A Pair of Red Clogs (Matsuno)
From Seed to Pumpkin (Pfeffer) 
The Subway Mouse (Reid)
Apples (Robbins)
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge (Swift)
The Color Kittens (Wise Brown)
Owl Moon (Yolen)

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering Grade 1:
The Ugly Duckling (Andersen)
Owl at Home (Lobel)
My First Little House Books (Wilder)

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
Flower Fairies of the Spring (Barker) (+)
Stone Soup (Brown)
Cowboy Sam (Chandler) (+)  
The Josefina Story Quilt (Coerr) 
Bedtime for Frances (Hoban) (+) 
Danny and the Dinosaur (Hoff) 
Sammy the Seal (Hoff)
Little Bear – Series (Holmelund Minarik) (+)
Ling and Ting (Lin) (+)
Frog and Toad – Series (Lobel) (+)
Mouse Tales (Lobel)
Mouse Soup (Lobel)
Henry and Mudge in Puddle Trouble (Rylant) (+)
Mr. Putter and Tabby (Rylant) (+)
Plenty of Fish (Selsam)
Let’s Get Turtles (Selsam)
Seeds and More Seeds (Selsam)
A Child’s Garden of Verses (Stevenson)
Aesop’s Fables (Winter) 

Early Readers:
Advanced Level Bob Books Green Light Readers
I Can Read Books Puffin Easy-to-Read Step Into Reading Dick and Jane Books
Dr. Seuss Early Readers
D. Eastman Early Readers Munro Leaf Classics
Read-It! Readers

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering Grade 2:
Little Bear (Holmelund Minarik) 
The Story of Ferdinand (Leaf) 
Frog and Toad are Friends (Lobel)
Henry and Mudge (Rylant)

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering Grade 2:
The Emperor’s New Clothes (Andersen)
Daniel’s Duck (Bulla)
Heroes (Wiseman and McLean)

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
Billy and Blaze (Anderson) (+) 
Jenny and the Cat Club (Averill) (+) 
The Fast Sooner Hound (Bontemps)
Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook (Brisley) 
Dick Wittington and His Cat (Brown) 
The Golly Sisters (Byars) (+)
Cross-Country Cat (Calhoun) 
The Ugly Duckling (Cauley) 
Henry Huggins (Cleary) (+)
The Courage of Sarah Noble (Dagliesh)
Babar (DeBrunhoff) (+)
Betsy and Billy (Haywood) (+)
Snowshoe Thompson (Levinson)
Jeremy: The Tale of an Honest Bunny (Karon)
One Morning in Maine (McCloskey) 
Time of Wonder (McCloskey) 
Amelia Bedelia (Parish) (+)
Nate the Great (Sharmat) (+)
And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon (Stevens)
A Gift for Tia Rose (Taha)
The Biggest Bear (Ward)
The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse (Williams)
The Velveteen Rabbit (Williams)

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering Grade 3 (choose at least 3 from this list):
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain (Dalgliesh)
Stone Fox (Gardiner)
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (Lee Burton)
Sarah, Plain and Tall (MacLachlan) 
The Boxcar Children (Nesbit) 
Amelia Bedelia (Parish)
Stuart Little (White)

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering Grade 3:
A Bear Called Paddington (Bond)
The Kitchen Knight: A Tale of King Arthur (Hodges)
Paddle-to-the-Sea (Holling)

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
Poppy (Avi)
Miss Hickory (Bailey) 
Tumtum and Nutmeg (Beam) 
The Penderwicks (Birdsall)
A Lion to Guard Us (Bulla) 
Shoeshine Girl (Bulla) 
Animal Stories (Burgess) (+)
The Enormous Egg (Butterworth)
The Family Under the Bridge (Carlson)
Ramona (Cleary) (+)
James and the Giant Peach (Dahl) 
The Matchlock Gun (Edmonds) 
The Saturdays (Enright)
Ginger Pye (Estes)
The Hundred Dresses (Estes)
McBroom’s Wonderful One-Acre Farm (Fleishman)
The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame) 
The Wind in the Willows (Grahame) 
The Peterkin Papers (Hale)
B is for Betsy (Haywood) (+)
Misty of Chincoteague (Henry) (+)
James Herriot’s Treasury for Children (Herriot)
The Bobbsey Twins (Hope) (+)
Aldo Applesauce (Hurwitz)
Trailblazer Series (Jackson) (+) 
Babe: The Gallant Pig (King-Smith) 
Just So Stories (Kipling)
Rabbit Hill (Lawson)  
Prairie School (Lenski) (+) 
Strawberry Girl (Lenski) 
Betsy-Tacy (Lovelace) (+) 
Miss Pickerell (MacGregor)
The Railway Children (Nesbit)
In Grandma’s Attic (Richardson)
Time Warp Trio: Sam Samurai (Scieszka)
Five Little Peppers (Sidney) (+) 
The Green Ember (Smith) (+) 
Encyclopedia Brown (Sobol) (+) 
Secret Agents Four (Sobol)
The True Adventure of Daniel Hall (Stanley)
Mysterious Benedict Society (Stewart)
Little Pilgrim’s Progress (Taylor)
All-of-a-Kind Family (Taylor)
Boxcar Children, Book 2 (Warner) (+)
The Happy Hollisters (West)

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering Grade 4 (choose at least 3 from this list):
Pinocchio (Collodi)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Dahl)
Owls in the Family (Mowat)
The Cricket in Times Square (Selden) 

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering Grade 4:
Charlotte’s Web (White)
Farmer Boy (Wilder) 

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
The Book of Three (Alexander)
Sounder (Armstrong)
Peter Pan (Barrie)
The Shakespeare Stealer (Blackwood)
Caddie Woodlawn (Brink)
The Summer of the Swans (Byars)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
Bud, Not Buddy (Curtis)
The Tale of Despereaux (DiCamillo)
The Hardy Boys (Dixon) (+) 
The Matchlock Gun (Edmonds) 
Thimble Summer (Enright)
The Black Stallion (Farley) 
Calico Bush (Field) 
Inkheart (Funke) (+)
My Side of the Mountain (George) 
The Little White Horse (Gouge) 
The Peterkin Papers (Hale)
The Bobbsey Twins (Hope) (+)
Redwall (Jacques) (+)
The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories (Keene) (+)
Lassie Come Home (Knight)
A Horse and His Boy (Lewis) (+)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Lin)
Mine for Keeps (Little)
Dr. Doolittle (Lofting) (+)
The Bears of Blue River (Major)
Little Britches (Moody)
Gentle Ben (Morey)
Five Children and It (Nesbit) (A)
Just David (Porter) Pollyanna (Porter) 
Men of Iron (Pyle)
Swallows and Amazons (Ransome)
Bambi (Salten)
The Good Master (Seredy) 
Five Little Peppers (Sidney) (+) 
The Green Ember (Smith) (+)
Treasures of the Snow (St. John) 
All-of-a-Kind Family (Taylor) 
Many Moons (Thurber)
The Beggar’s Bible (Vernon) 

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering Grade 5:
Mr. Popper’s Penguins (Atwater)
Homer Price (McCloskey)
The Twenty-One Balloons (Pène du Bois)

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering Grade 5:
The Incredible Journey (Burnford)
Understood Betsy (Fisher)
The Princess and the Goblin (MacDonald)

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
Little Women (Alcott)
The Prydain Chronicles (Lloyd) (+)
Sounder (Armstrong)
Turn Homeward, Hannalee (Beatty)
Twenty and Ten (Bishop)
The Little Princess (Burnett)
I Have Lived a Thousand Years (Bitton-Jackson)
The Summer of the Swans (Byars) 
The House of Sixty Fathers (De Jong) 
Hans Brinker (Dodge)
Hitty (Field)
Life of Faith (Finley)
Robin Hood (Gilbert) 
The Boy Knight (Henty)
Puck of Pook’s Hill (Kipling)
Big Red (Kjelgaard) (+)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Lin)
Rascal (North)
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (O’Brien)
The King’s Fifth (O’Dell)
My Friend Flicka (O’Hara)
Bridge to Terabithia (Paterson)
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (Peterson) (+)
The Westing Game (Raskin) 
Summer of the Monkeys (Rawls) 
The White Stag (Seredy)
Miracles on Maple Hill (Sorensen)
Calico Captive (Speare) 
Ballet Shoes (Streatfeild) 
Eagle of the Ninth (Sutcliffe)
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor)
Lad: A Dog (Terhune)
From Earth to Moon (Verne)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Verne)
Adventures of Robin Hood (Vivian) 
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Wiggin)
Amos Fortune (Yates)

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering Grade 6 (choose at least 3 from this list):
Little Lord Fauntleroy (Burnett)
A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
The Jungle Book (Kipling)
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (Latham)
Black Beauty (Sewell)
Underground to Canada (Smucker)
Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss)

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering Grade 6:
The Princess and Curdie (MacDonald)
Tom’s Midnight Garden (Pearce)
Trumpet of the Swan (White)

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
Little Men (Alcott)
The Wizard of Oz (Baum) (+)
The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan)
The Lost Prince (Burnett)
Father Brown, The Essential Tales (Chesterton)
The Odyssey for Boys and Girls (Church)
Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)
The Wheel on the School (De Jong)
Oliver Twist (Dickens)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle)
Six Sherlock Holmes Stories (Doyle)
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Foxe)
In the Reign of Terror (Henty)
Trial and Triumph (Hannula)
ron Man (Hughes)
The Man Who Would Be King (Kipling)
A Wrinkle in Time (L’Engle)
Tales From Shakespeare (Lamb)
The Silver Chair (Lewis)
Call of the Wild (London)
White Fang (London)
At the Back of the North Wind (MacDonald)
The Light Princess (MacDonald)
Sarah Bishop (O’Dell)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy)
Hatchet (Paulsen)
The Yearling (Rawlings)
Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls)
Kidnapped (Stevenson)
Gulliver’s Travels (Swift)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain)
Around the World in 80 Days (Verne)
The War of the Worlds (Wells)

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering Grade 7:
Phantom Tollbooth (Juster)
Number the Stars (Lowry)
Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery)
Heidi (Spyri)

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering Grade 7:
Door in the Wall (de Angeli)
The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
Watership Down (Adams)
Sounder (Armstrong)
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (Avi) 
Archimedes and the Door of Science (Bendick) 
Herodotus and the Road to History (Bendick) 
God’s Smuggler (Brother Andrew)
Ender’s Game (Card)
Through the Looking Glass (Carroll) 
The Little Prince (De Saint-Exupery) 
Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)
The Three Musketeers (Dumas)
David Livingstone, Foe of Darkness (Eaton)
Horatio Hornblower (Forester)
Blue Willow (Gates)
The Endless Steppe (Hautzig)
The Best Short Stories of O. Henry (Henry)
The Cat of Bubastes (Henty)
For the Temple: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem (Henty)
A Story of the Roman Invasion (Henty)
Wulf the Saxon: A Story of the Norman Conquest (Henty)
The Young Carthaginian (Henty)
All Creatures Great and Small (Herriot)
Letters from Rifka (Hesse)  
The Story of My Life (Keller) 
Captains Courageous (Kipling)
Sir Gibbie/The Baronet’s Song (MacDonald) 
The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt By Day (O’Dell) 
Rob Roy (Scott)
Miracles on Maple Hill (Sorensen)
The Bronze Bow (Speare)
The Black Arrow (Stevenson)
Morning Star of the Reformation (Thomson) 
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) 
The Once and Future King (White) 
Augustine Came to Kent (Willard)
God King: A Story in the Days of King Hezekiah (Williamson)
100 Cupboards (Wilson) (A)
The Devil’s Arithmetic (Yolen)

Essential Summer Reading for Students New to WCCA entering Grade 8:
Tuck Everlasting (Babbitt)
Treasure Seekers (Nesbit)
Island of the Blue Dolphins (O’Dell)

Essential Summer Reading for Students Continuing at WCCA entering Grade 8:
Animal Farm (Orwell)
The Two Towers (Tolkien)

Enrichment Reading (any time of the year):
The Life of King Alfred (Asser)
Emma (Austen)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 
Northanger Abbey (Austen) (+) 
To Sir, With Love (Braithwaite) 
Jane Eyre (Brontë)
Wuthering Heights (Brontë)
The Good Earth (Buck)
The Age of Chivalry (Bulfinch)
The Legends of Charlemagne (Bulfinch)
O Pioneers! (Cather)
Death on the Nile (Christie)
The Red Badge of Courage (Crane) 
The House of Sixty Fathers (De Jong) 
David Copperfield (Dickens)
Great Expectations (Dickens)
The Robe (Douglas)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass)
The White Company (Doyle)
Middlemarch (Eliot)
Silas Marner (Eliot)
The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow (French)
The Princess Bride (Goldman) 
The Last Crusader (Grant) 
Death Be Not Proud (Gunther) 
Chaucer (Haweis)
The Boy Knight: A Tale of the Crusades (Henty)
Dune (Herbert)
Hind’s Feet on High Places (Hurnard)
Victory on the Walls: A Story of Nehemiah (Hyman)
Rip Van Winkle (Irving)
The Legends of Sleepy Hollow (Irving)
Marlfox (Jacques)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
Out of the Silent Planet (Lewis) (+)
The Screwtape Letters (Lewis) 
Till We Have Faces (Lewis) 
The Silver Eagle (Kane)
The Gammage Cup (Kendall) 
Flowers for Algernon (Keyes) 
Kim (Kipling)
The Wise Woman: A Parable (MacDonald)
More Than a Carpenter (McDowell) 
Otto of the Silver Hand (Pyle) 
Beowulf (Raffel)
The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor (Riordan)
Whose Body? (Sayers) (+)
Ivanhoe (Scott)
The Lady of the Lake (Scott) 
The Pearl (Steinbeck) 
Knight’s Fee (Sutcliff)
The Wanderings of Odysseus (Sutcliff)
The Case for Christ (Strobel)
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor)