Best Reading Books For Kindergarten

Are you looking for the best reading books for Kindergarten aged children.  We want to help!  We're currently building our list so it's a little short at this point, but we are working on it!  Lots of books written for children at this age are books that are read TO the child.  Those are important and essential, but our focus on this website is books kids can READ THEMSELVES (ie: beginning reading books for Kindergarten students to read on their own, with some support from teacher and family).  Below you will find the lists we have so far, but please do check back regularly because we aim to grow these lists a great deal over the coming months.

Please remember these are averages.  Kids progress in reading at different rates.  To find the best fit for your child, we recommend you either: (1) Try just a few books from one section and then assess if your child needs to move to easier books or move to harder books. -OR- (2) Ask your child's teacher for their current "reading level."  There are four common leveling systems (DRA, Lexile, Accelerated Reader, and Guided Reading/Fountas & Pinnell).  Most teachers either use one of these leveling system or are at least familiar enough with them to know the different levels for their own grade.  Then you can just match your child's level with the lists below.



Start with these beginning reading books for Kindergarten:


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Beginning reading books for Kindergarten -- list 1  AA-B2

Unless your child is already a reader, start the year with these books.  They focus on skills the average Kindergartener starts the school year learning, including:

  • understanding how print works
  • seeing the connection between alphabet letters and the sounds they make
  • being able to take clues from pictures in constructing stories. 

These books include A LOT of repetition in word usage and storyline, which is very helpful at this level. List 2 is a little more challenging than list 1.

(These books are leveled as: DRA A and 2 --or-- Fountas & Pinnell Guided Reading A and B)



Then move onto these best reading books for Kindergarten:


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Best reading books for Kindergarten -- list 2  C4-D6

When your child is ready (perhaps half way through the year), move on to these books that build on more of what is learned in Kindergarten, including

  • stronger letter-sound fluency to decode words ("sounding it out")
  • reading more words per page (as high as 4-6 lines in list 4 books)
  • reading from left to right (and when a line is done, "sweeping" to the left for the next line)
  • familiarity with some basic high frequency words (ie: the, like, is...)

Like the previous list, these books include a lot of repetition, but that is helpful at this level. Also, rereading a book numerous times can be really helpful, as it builds word familiarity, fluency, and confidence!

(These books are leveled as: DRA 4 and 6 --or-- Fountas & Pinnell Guided Reading C and D)






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Is your child ready to move beyond beginning reading books for Kindergarten?

Check out our lists of books first graders can read.

Some children will be ready for more challenging books before the Kindergarten year is over.  If so, we wholeheartedly recommend moving them on at their own pace rather than keeping them back based on these lists. This will keep them interested and challenged!  And it'd be great to stock up on these books for the summer, just so your child doesn't lose all the great reading progress they have made so far (aka "the summer slump.")

(Note: Skip to the SECOND list on the 'books for first graders' page in order to find more challenging books for your young reader.  The first list on that page is the same as the last list on this page, since that is the reading level where kids would have ended Kindergarten reading on.)



Know of any Kindergarten reading books we should include? We'd love your help.

As we mentioned above, there aren't a ton of great beginning reading books for Kindergarten aged children. That's understandable. If we were children's book authors, we probably would be more focused on writing funny, clever, cute stories than on making sure our word choice and storylines are readable and comprendible by the very earliest of readers.  In fact, writing decent sentences with only those "allowable" words for Kindergarteners (words they can decode or pick up from picture clues)....that's probably really challenging! 

We'd think there are more great books for Kindergarteners out there though, so we're still working on it.  If you know of any we should add, please let us know!  We want this to be parents' and teachers' one-stop-shop for the best reading books for Kindergarten.

We hope you enjoy these lists and find them helpful.  :)