Free Printable Summer Reading Lists for Every Grade

Make this your family’s best summer of reading ever with these free summer reading lists! We want to help you build a culture of reading in your home with titles you can trust to uphold your family’s values. That’s why we’ve put together these book lists with ten recommendations for every grade level to keep your kids busy reading this summer. Grab the book lists in printable form here along with some fun tracker sheets.

Kindergarten

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
Corduroy by Don Freeman
Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena
Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodinka
Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion
The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf

First Grade

Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik
Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel
Billy and Blaze by C. W. Anderson
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
Come On, Rain! by Karen Hesse
This Is My Home, This Is My School by Jonathan Bean
Tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond
Abraham Lincoln by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey

Second Grade

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dagliesh
The Secret Garden of George Washington Carver by Gene Barretta
Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish
Building Our House by Jonathan Bean
A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams
The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco
When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant
Greg’s Microscope by Millicent E. Selsam

Third Grade

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
Vision of Beauty: The Story of Sarah Breedlove Walker by Kathryn Lasky
Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Florence and Richard Atwater
The Illustrated Pilgrim’s Progress by Helen L. Taylor
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Nate the Great by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Secret of the Hidden Scrolls: The Beginning by M. J. Thomas
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright

Fourth Grade

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
The Green Ember by S. D. Smith
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White

Fifth Grade

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien
The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
Sounder by William H. Armstrong
The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Beneath the Swirling Sky by Carolyn Leiloglou
Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Stewart
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Sixth Grade

Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Jeanne Birdsall
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson
The Ocean of Truth: The Story of Sir Isaac Newton by Joyce McPherson
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Redwall by Brian Jacques

Seventh Grade

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Latham
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Watership Down by Richard Adams

Eighth Grade

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss
Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates
The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba

Ninth Grade

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King
Through Gates of Splendor by Elizabeth Elliot
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Tenth Grade

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
A Chameleon, a Boy, and a Quest by Jennifer Myhre
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
The Once and Future King by T. H. White

Eleventh Grade

The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Henry V by William Shakespeare
Emma by Jane Austen
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
Night by Elie Wiesel

Twelfth Grade

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1984 by George Orwell
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
The Call by Os Guinness
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Don’t forget to grab your FREE summer reading printable to get these book lists in printable form along with some fun pages to track your summer reading.

Need even more book recommendations?

Check out these articles for some more of our summer favorites.

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