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TAD Reading Suggestions

Reading Suggestions from the Texas Alternative Document

Donna Garner is a Texas teacher who was the lead writer for the Texas Alternative Document. In the paper below, she excerpts the sections of the TAD that provide reading recommendations.

You may also wish to see the excellent reading list that Mrs. Gardner provides in her classes. There are some just wonderful books on her list that do not always appear on other lists. Plus, Mrs. Garner's list has a very healthy separate list of non-fiction books, a category that is often woefully sparse on lists of reading suggestions.


Alternatives to Harry Potter:
Reading Suggestions from the
Texas Alternative Document

excerpted by Donna Garner, Lead Writer of TAD
November 21, 2001


For those of you who are looking for alternatives to Harry Potter, here is a secular reading list (Pre-School through Grade 10) which the writers of the Texas Alternative Document (TAD) have recommended. If you would like to view the TAD in its entirety (Pre-K through Grade 12), please click here.


TEXAS ALTERNATIVE DOCUMENT
ENGLISH / LANGUAGE ARTS / READING
RECOMMENDED READING
PRE-K THROUGH GRADE 10

PRE-SCHOOL

Listen to various types of children's literature: nursery rhymes, fables, fairy tales, poems, classical literature, rhyming stories, and factual stories about notable people, science, history (e.g., Mother Goose rhymes, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," "Chicken Little," "How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?" "King Midas and the Golden Touch," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal, "The Little Engine That Could").

KINDERGARTEN

Listen to notable literary selections which are rich in vocabulary (e.g., Mother Goose rhymes, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," "Rain," "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," "Cinderella," "The Little Red Hen," "A Tug of War," "The Ugly Duckling," The Velveteen Rabbit, Winnie-the-Pooh, One Morning in Maine).

Listen to stories being read aloud (e.g., "Mother Goose" poems, "Dr.Seuss" books, Aesop's fables, James Thurber's Fables, Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales, "Casey Jones," "Johnny Appleseed," American and folk legends).

FIRST GRADE

Listen to stories being read aloud (e.g., "Mother Goose" poems, "Dr.Seuss" books, Aesop's fables, James Thurber's Fables, Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales, "Casey Jones," "Johnny Appleseed," American and folk legends).

Listen daily to selections (e.g., fables, fairy tales, poems, classical literature, and factual stories about notable people, science, and history) that are challenging (at or slightly above the student's level of oral language comprehension).

SECOND GRADE

Listen to selections (e.g., nursery rhymes, fables, fairy tales, poems, classical literature, rhyming stories, factual stories about notable people, science, and history) which are rich in vocabulary.

Present brief, comprehensive narrative summaries of notable literary selections which are rich in vocabulary (e.g., "Harriet Tubman," "Hurt No Living Thing," "Seashell," "Smart," "Caterpillars," "A Christmas Carol," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "How the Camel Got His Hump," "Beauty and the Beast," "The Blind Men and the Elephant" "The Spider and the Fly," "Who Has Seen the Wind?" Charlotte's Web, "El Pájaro Cu," The Courage of Sarah Noble, The Fourth of July Story, The Little House in the Big Woods). Present brief, comprehensive narrative summaries of notable literary selections which are rich in vocabulary (e.g., "Harriet Tubman," "Hurt No Living Thing," "Seashell," "Smart," "Caterpillars," "A Christmas Carol," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "How the Camel Got His Hump," "Beauty and the Beast," "The Blind Men and the Elephant" "The Spider and the Fly," "Who Has Seen the Wind?" Charlotte's Web, "El Pájaro Cu," The Courage of Sarah Noble, The Fourth of July Story, The Little House in the Big Woods).

THIRD GRADE

Present brief, comprehensive narrative summaries of notable literary selections which are rich in vocabulary (e.g., "Harriet Tubman," "Hurt No Living Thing," "Seashell," "Smart," "Caterpillars," "A Christmas Carol," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "How the Camel Got His Hump," "Beauty and the Beast," "The Blind Men and the Elephant" "The Spider and the Fly," "Who Has Seen the Wind?" Charlotte's Web, "El Pájaro Cu," The Courage of Sarah Noble, The Fourth of July Story, The Little House in the Big Woods).

FOURTH GRADE

Present brief, comprehensive, narrative summaries of notable literary selections which are rich in vocabulary (e.g., Gulliver's Travels, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Robinson Crusoe, Robin Hood, Treasure Island, "The Sword in the Stone" from The Once and Future King, On the Banks of Plum Creek, "Concord Hymn," Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mary Poppins, Caddie Woodlawn, Blue Willow, My Side of the Mountain, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch; speeches by Patrick Henry and Sojourner Truth; poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Sandburg, Ogden Nash, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).

FIFTH GRADE

Present brief, comprehensive, narrative summaries of notable literary selections (e.g., poetry: Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Lewis Carroll, Robert Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson; Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little House on the Prairie, Little Women, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Black Beauty, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Prince and the Pauper, Swiss Family Robinson, Sounder, Landing of the Pilgrims, The Wheel on the School, The Good Master, Call It Courage, tales from Sherlock Holmes).

SIXTH GRADE

Present brief, comprehensive, narrative summaries of notable literary selections (e.g., poetry: William Wordsworth, Rudyard Kipling, James Weldon Johnson, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Little Men, Little Women, National Velvet, "The Devil and Daniel Webster," Adam of the Road, The Door in the Wall, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, Across Five Aprils, The Call of the Wild, The Bronze Bow, The Yearling, Little Town on the Prairie, and Amos Fortune, Free Man).

SEVENTH GRADE

Present brief, comprehensive, narrative summaries of notable literary selections (e.g, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "Heritage," "Annabel Lee," "Auld Lang Syne," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "Fire and Ice," "The Necklace," "Gift of the Magi," The Call of the Wild, The Prince and the Pauper, Jane Eyre, ABC Murders, Johnny Tremain, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Cheaper by the Dozen, The Man Without a Country, The Old Man and the Sea, The Jungle Book, Big Red, My Friend Flicka, The Time Machine, Born Free, Helen Keller: The Story of My Life, Around the World in 80 Days).

EIGHTH GRADE

Present brief, comprehensive, narrative summary of notable literary selections (e.g., "Sonnet 18," "My Heart Leaps Up," "Ozymandias," "Mending Wall," "Chicago," "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," "Dr. Heidgegger's Experiment," "I Have a Dream," Animal Farm, The Good Earth, As You Like It, Robinson Crusoe, Captains Courageous, The Hobbit, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Living Free, Kon-Tiki).

NINTH GRADE

Present brief, comprehensive, narrative summaries of notable literary selections (e.g., "The Lady or the Tiger?" "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," "My Heart Leaps Up," "Wind Song," "Sweet Afton," "Flower in the Crannied Wall," "Roughing It," "The Day the Dam Broke," Romeo and Juliet, The Odyssey, Great Expectations, Watership Down, Wuthering Heights, And Then There Were None, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," The Last of the Mohicans, The Three Musketeers).

TENTH GRADE

Present brief, comprehensive, narrative summaries of notable literary selections (e.g., "The Monkey's Paw," "The Red-Headed League," "Chee's Daughter," "April Showers," "Mammon and the Archer," "I Like To See It Lap the Miles," "Two Sentences for Gabriela Mistral," "A Child's Christmas in Wales," "Grant and Lee at Appomattox," "The Boar Hunt," "To Julia de Burgos," "Six Haiku," "Sunset," Julius Caesar, Cyrano de Bergerac, Idylls of the King, Rebecca, David Copperfield, The Count of Monte Cristo, Silas Marner, The Return of the Native, Gone with the Wind, Death Be Not Proud, Profiles in Courage, The Battle of Midway).

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