“Help! I need a book to read to my child’s 3rd grade class!”
Third Grade Read-alouds at the Elmhurst Public Library

Araminta's Paint Box   by Karen Ackerman
When her family moves from Boston to California in 1847, Araminta and her paint box become separated, but through a series of new owners, the paint box finds its way to California.

Song and Dance Man   by Karen Ackerman
Grandpa demonstrates for his visiting grandchildren some of the songs, dances, and jokes he performed when he was a vaudeville entertainer. Caldecott Award Winner

King Crow by Jennifer Armstrong
Jailed by an evil foe, a king receives invaluable help from a crow that regularly brings him the latest news.

The Table Where Rich People Sit   by Byrd Baylor
A girl discovers that her impoverished family is rich in things that matter in life, especially being outdoors and experiencing nature. This is a funny story with a serious message and the idea that money is an arbitrary and usually inadequate value system should be apparent to many readers.

Fanny's Dream   by Mark Buehner
Fanny is a farm girl who dreams of marrying a prince, or at least the mayor's son. Instead, Heber, a short, kind farmer asks for Fanny's hand. Shortly after their third child arrives, Fanny’s apologetic fairy godmother appears. She offers Fanny the life she always dreamed of. What will Fanny choose?

Fly Away Home   by Eve Bunting
This is a sensitive book about a boy and his dad who live at the airport.

Train to Somewhere   by Eve Bunting
From 1850 to the 1920s trains carried orphans and children whose parents could not or would not care for them to new homes on the Great Plains. Marianne boards the train in New York with fourteen other children and Miss Randolph, their caretaker, to be taken in by people in the country towns at which they stop.

A River Ran Wild   by Lynne Cherry
This is a beautifully done biography of a river. By focusing on the life in and around the Nashua River, Cherry brings history, ecology and progress into view. The illustrations alone are a history book.

Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel   by Leslie Connor
Miss Bridie leaves for a new life, bringing with her a shovel. She leans on it aboard the ship, clears the snow off the ice with it when she goes skating, and uses it to dig the holes on the farm for the apple trees. The shovel becomes a symbol of taking life as it comes with a practical acceptance of its joys and sorrows.

Look to the North: A Wolf Pup Diary   by Jean Craighead George
Brief diary entries that mark the passage of the seasons introduce the events in the lives of three wolves as they grow from helpless pups to participants in their small pack's hunt.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers   by Mordicai Gerstein
A lyrical evocation of Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers.

A Cache of Jewels   by Ruth Heller
Ruth Heller deals with collective nouns such as flock, army, herd and, of course, cache. Some of them are so common, we've forgotten they are collective nouns and others are rare and intriguing. It's the illustrations that lift the book beyond nice to superb.

My Great-Aunt Arizona   by Gloria Houston
Arizona was born and bred in the back hollows of the Blue Ridge Mountains and she never leaves it except for the brief time when she goes away to learn to be a teacher. She's a reader and she's visited many far away places in her reading. She often tells children that someday they may go where she has never been.

Rocks in His Head   by Carol Otis Hurst
He collected rocks and minerals from the time he was a small boy, not caring that others thought it was a waste of time. When the Great Depression brought an end to his gas station business, it was those rocks that presented him with a new and far more fulfilling career.

Emma   by Wendy Kesselman
Emma’s children and grandchildren have gathered to help her celebrate her seventy-second birthday. They've even chosen a thoughtful gift, a picture of the village where Emma grew up. Emma is pleased with the gift, but that just isn't the way she remembers her village. So she buys art materials and paints her village her way.

Beats Me, Claude   by Nixon, Joan Lowry
Shirley and Claude have settled in East Texas where Claude is happy but Shirley is lonely. When Tom, an orphan, turns up at the door, Shirley wants to keep him and it takes all her wiles, a bank robber, a pseudo-preacher, army deserters, and several apple pies to bring Claude around to her way of thinking.

The Keeping Quilt   by Polacco, Patricia
A Russian immigrant mother and family arrive in the United States. She plans to make a quilt from a basket of old clothes, telling her daughter, "It will be like having the family back home in Russia dance around us at night".

Elizabeth and Larry   by Marilyn Sadler
Elizabeth is sixty-two and Larry, "pushing forty." They share so many common interests that it seems their friendship will last forever. The only thing they don't share is a species: Elizabeth is a human and Larry, an alligator.

Elmhurst Public Library