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Summer Reading

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K-8 Recommended  

Summer Reading

Summer reading is not required for students enrolling in Ascent Classical Academy, however, we encourage all students to continue reading during summer break.

The benefits of summer reading are well documented, including the maintenance of literacy skills and preventing “summer slide” or learning loss. Students who engage in summer reading make gains in reading proficiency, increase their vocabulary, and learn to make reading for pleasure a life-long habit.

The Ascent Classical Academies suggested reading list for the 2024-2025 school year can be found below. All lists below are prepared for students rising to each grade.

Kindergarten and 1st Grade
  • Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes – Robert Frederick Publishers 
  • The Random House of Mother Goose, Arnold Lobel  
  • The Classic Treasury of Aesop’s Fables, Don Daily  
  • Curious George books, H. A. Rey  
  • Books by Dr. Seuss such as:
    ○ The Cat in the Hat
    ○ Fox in Socks
    ○ Green Eggs and Ham
    ○ Horton Hears a Who
    ○ If I Ran the Zoo 
  • Books by Beatrix Potter such as:
    ○ Peter Rabbit
    ○ The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
    ○ The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck
    ○ The Tale of Tom Kitten  
  • Fairy tales such as:
    ○ Goldilocks
    ○ The Three Little Pigs
    ○ The Ugly Duckling
    ○ The Velveteen Rabbit  
2nd Grade
  • Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales, Beatrix Potter 
  • The Biggest Bear, Lynd Kendall Ward  
  • The Blue Fairy Book, Andrew Lang 
  • The Classic Treasury of Aesop’s Fables, Don Daily 
  • The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne
  • George and Martha series, James Marshall  
  • The House at Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne 
  • James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl 
  • Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling  
  • The Magic School Bus (specifically books about weather, magnets, tools, the body, insects,  animals, and plants), Various Authors 
  • The Magic Tree House series, Mary Pope Osbourne 
  • Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi 
  • Treasury of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grimm 
  • Treasury of Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Andersen 
3rd Grade
  • American Tall Tales, Mary Pope Osbourne 
  • Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White 
  • The Cricket in Times Square, George Selden 
  • Dealing with Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede 
  • Falling Up, Shel Silverstein 
  • Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder 
  • The Magic Tree House series, Mary Pope Osbourne 
  • Matilda, Roald Dahl 
  • Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Richard Atwater 
  • Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie 
  • Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster 
  • The Pushcart War, Jean Merrill 
  • Ramona Quimby series, Beverly Cleary 
  • Stuart Little, E.B. White 
4th Grade
  • Aladdin and Other Arabian Nights Stories, Philip Smith 
  • Black Beauty, Anna Sewell 
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl 
  • Dangerous Journey, Oliver Hunkin 
  • D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths, Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire 
  • D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths, Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire 
  • From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L Konigsburg 
  • Guns for General Washington, Seymour Reit 
  • The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling 
  • Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Robert C O’Brien  
  • Poppy, Avi 
  • The Reluctant Dragon, Kenneth Grahame  
  • Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss 
  • Twenty-One Balloons, William Pene DuBois 
  • Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein
5th Grade
  • Anne of Green Gables Series, Lucy Maud Montgomery 
  • Boy’s King Arthur by Sidney Lanier 
  • Cheaper By the Dozen, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey 
  • Dancing Shoes, Noel Streatfeild 
  • Heidi, Johanna Spyri 
  • King Arthur and His Knights, Maude Radforde Warren  
  • The Magic City, Edith Nesbit 
  • Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry 
  • The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald 
  • The Shakespeare Stealer, Gary Blackwood 
  • Stories of Robin Hood Told to the Children, H.E. Marshall 
  • The Sword in the Tree, Clyde Robert Bulla  
  • Treasure Island: A Young Reader’s Edition of The Classic Adventure, Robert Louis Stevenson
  • A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle 
6th Grade
  • Don Quixote (Core Classics Series edition, abridged)  
  • The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff 
  • The Giver, Lois Lowry 
  • The Golden Fleece, Padraic Colum 
  • Half Magic, Edward Eager 
  • Little Women (Core Classics Series edition, abridge)  
  • Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Eleanor Coerr 
  • The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett 
  • The Secret of Platform Thirteen, Eva Ibbotson 
  • The Sign of the Beaver, Elizabeth George Speare 
  • Sounder, William Armstrong 
  • Tales from Shakespeare, Charles and Mary Lamb 
  • Up From Slavery (Dover Thrift Edition), Booker T. Washington 
  • The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin 
  • The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare  
  • Books from the Redwall series, Brian Jacques 
7th Grade
  • The Hobbit (75th Anniversary Edition; ISBN 978-0547928227), J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Archimedes and the Door of Science, Jeanne Bendic 
  • Augustus Caesar’s World, Genevieve Foster 
  • Herodotus and the Road to History, Jeanne Bendic 
  • The Story of the World, Vol. 1, Susan Wise Bauer 
  • The Story of the World, Vol. 3, Susan Wise Bauer 
  • Tanglewood Tales, Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
8th Grade
  • Shane (ISBN: 978-0544239470), Jack Schaefer
  • The Ballad of the White Horse, G.K. Chesterton 
  • Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling 
  • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain
  • Gods and Heroes, Edith Hamilton 
  • The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells 
  • Land of Hope, Young Readers’ Edition, Wilfred McClay
  • The Story of the World series, Susan Wise Bauer 
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis