Readaloud Books for 5th Grade Classrooms

After a memorable birthday sleepover with her two best friends, Elise wakes up to realize that time has jumped by six months and her best friends no longer speak to her. With the help of an old friend, she works to figure out what happened and how to undo it. This is more fantasy time travel than sci-fi and has a slightly spooky feel for kids who like books about magic with a touch of mystery. I love that it’s short, highly accessible, and written from two points of view, while tackling hugely relatable themes like friendship and being brave.

Deena is an anxious artist with two best friends, Lucia and Nisha. She’s also close to her cousin Parisa who loves social media, makeup, and being famous. Deena doesn’t know it yet, but the knot in her stomach and nausea she feels every morning is thanks to anxiety. One of the main sources of her anxiety is her parents’ bickering about financial issues. When Deena has an idea to promote her mom’s business on social media and help them earn more, she hopes it will reduce her parents’ bickering. But her social media use comes with its unique issues, even as Deena realizes she needs more support for her anxiety. Drawing Deena is an inspiring, feel-good story about a young artist surmounting creative challenges and managing anxiety.

Averil’s mom and several parents of kids in her school and neighborhood use an app called Ruby Slippers to track their kids’ location, request video and photos from them on demand, and generally monitor their behavior and actions all day and Averil and Max, another classmate, are sick of it. Especially when they find out that the app will be updated soon to let parents remotely turn on their kids’ cameras at will. Both kids make a plot to ditch a camping trip and spend the weekend hunting down the original app developer, Rider Wollybeck, in hopes of asking him to rescind the update. Averil Offline is a clever, outside-the-box mystery-adventure story about childhood autonomy and women in STEM (coding)

In this exceptional debut novel, a boy and a typewriter work together to solve the mystery of his missing mother. The Brindley family has been through the wringer but seem to be on the mend after “Everything that happened before” when all of a sudden, their mother leaves the house in tears, witnessed only by her Olivetti typewriter, which she pawns immediately for the precise sum of $126. The pawn shop owner’s daughter accosts Ernest, the third out of four Brindley kids, right after he steals back the Olivetti, which he discovers can type back in response. The two work together, Ernest, reluctant, Quinn confident and opinionated, to retrace his mother’s steps and figure out why she ran away. This reads like an instant classic, and although some readers may be dubious about the talking typewriter element, it is excellently executed — better than many anthropomorphized animals and creatures have been in books.

This book is about Castle Crenshaw (aka Ghost), who has PTSD from a dad who tried to fire a gun at him as a child. When he meets Coach and the rest of the team, he can finally harness his talent as a sprinter and stop running away from his problems. I love how powerful these kids’ stories are (in the Track series) and that they’re super short — this one is only 185 pages long. 

Ava loves nature and wishes she could spend more time in the woods instead of her family’s Manhattan apartment. Fortune seems to smile on her when her auntie Raven, who is estranged from her mom, allows her to come spend the summer in the Adirondacks with her. A summer stay turns into a year-long stay with Ava’s parent’s permission. However, a miscommunication leads to Ava being stuck at the cottage in the winter and having to survive on her own before help comes. Stranded is a riveting survival story with major appeal for upper elementary and younger middle schoolers who love survival stories like Hatchet and Alone.

Andrew is having the WORST day. His shirt’s been torn by his class bully, a basketball has slammed into his face, leaving him with a black eye, and his grandmother with dementia has gone missing — all on his class picture day. It doesn’t help that Andrew has generalized anxiety. In his trademark humor, Harrell takes readers through Andrew’s day with spot illustrations, relatable storytelling, and plenty of heart. 

It’s about Evan, a moody middle schooler whose days consist of trying to figure out why his mom is always grumpy, defending his besties from the school bully, and trying to bond with his artist father. Until he meets a dog, or rather, the dog finds him. Told from the perspectives of Evan and the dog, a clever border collie with a love for running, this soaring, heartwarming adventure about friendship, family, and the healing power of dogs is perfect for fans of Silvey’s The Underdogs of Upson Downs. Bonus points for disability representation.

Fast Pitch is a companion title to Nic Stone’s Clean Getaway, which I really enjoyed! It stars Scoob’s crush Shenice, an U12 softball team captain whose concentration is shot when she stumbles upon a decades-long family mystery. Shenice and her team are preparing to win the Fastpitch World Series, when she discovers that a crime her great-grand father was accused of — which cost him his reputation and place in the Negro leagues — may have actually been a set-up all along. And now, Shenice is the only one who can clear his name. This is a fast-paced, poignant sports mystery about family, racism, and community.

It’s the 1930s, and Bea wakes up in a hayloft to a note from her dad, who’s abandoned her and her little sister Viv to a family friend they’ve never met. There, Bea works hard to be helpful to Mrs. Scott, in the hopes that the farm owner will keep her and her sister forever. She also forms a bond with a wild horse on the farm, which may just be the key to keeping the failing farm afloat. Bea and the New Deal Horse is an inspiring historical fiction book about life in the Great Depression, community, and the animal-human bond.

Summer and her family are on their yearly visit to her grandparents in the reservation in Alberta Canada where they live. But in the midst of spending time together, she begins to have strange vivid dreams about a girl escaping a residential school decades ago. At the same time, there’s a lot of uproar about more unmarked graves discovered in the area. This is a slim middle grade book that sheds light on a horrifying part of Indigenous history and will be eye-opening to kids and adults alike. It’s a mix of historical, realistic, and magical realism. It’s a solid debut regardless and with few books about the residential schools, this is worth a library purchase esp for schools in the US & Canada looking for Indigenous fiction.

In Duet, we meet a young goldfish, Mirabelle. Mirabelle lives with her mother and brothers in a nest next to a piano teacher’s house. Mr. Starek, the piano teacher, is now aged but has received a new student, Jin, who does not seem pleased to be taking lessons from Mr. Starek. After weeks of reluctance, Jin starts to play, and surprisingly, Mirabelle joins in, forcing Jin to notice her. Soon, the two begin to create duets together during Jin’s practice sessions. When Jin and Mirabelle find out that Mr. Starek’s late sister might have a special piano in her foreclosed home, they band together in a new way to investigate and solve a decades-old mystery about Frederick Chopin’s piano. This is an enrapturing, unique story about music, friendship, history, and birds — especially goldfinches.

Sixth-grader Birdie Loggerman’s life becomes complicated when she finds half a million dollars — cash — in an abandoned house. Her mom is a cleaner currently out of work because Birdie’s damaged property in her last client’s house. And Birdie’s best friend’s mother views her with disdain because she’s one of the poorer kids living in their highbrow area. So when Birdie finds all this money (she’s been praying for, no less), should she keep it? Or does finders, keepers not apply in this case? This is a super fast-paced, albeit slightly anxiety-inducing story about poverty, moral dilemmas and class privilege. 

Miss Lottie owns several “secondhand dogs” — dogs to whom she’s given a second chance. There’s Gus, the scraggly insecure pack leader, Tank the protective bulldog, nervous three-legged hunting dog, Roo, and the youngest pack member, Moonpie. She also has a cat named Ghost. When Miss Lottie brings home a new dog who wants to become the center of attention — and the only dog at home for that matter — the peace at home is threatened.The story is told from each of the dog’s perspectives — in the before (Miss Lottie) and after — as well as Miss Lottie’s and Quinn’s (the tween who cares for the dogs), also in the before and after. Secondhand Dogs is a sweet, heartwarming story about second chances and finding and protecting your pack — whether human and animal.

The Unteachables are a group of misfits deemed so hopeless (academically and in terms of behavior) that the school has isolated them in a class of their own. Mr. Zachary Kermit started off as an enthusiastic schoolteacher, but after a cheating scandal 25 years ago, he’s exactly the opposite. He’s coasting along, barely investing in his students and waiting for retirement. Until the school assigns him to teach Room 117 — The Unteachables. The kids nickname him Ribbit and as the school year progresses, both the kids and Mr. Kermit learn a lot from each other — and maybe the kids aren’t quite unreachable? The Unteachables is a funny, endearing middle-grade book full of hijinks and memorable characters. This one is on the longer side but such a favorite!