Board of a Small Nonprofit that Works with Elementary Students that Come from Non-English Speaking Homes Looking to Update Our Library. What Are The Best Books to Get Kids Excited About Reading?

Our oldest students are in the 6th grade. Our 2nd grader can’t really read at all still, but they’re all behind in Language Arts in school. We do not have any 1st graders right now, but that’s the grade we start at and our Spanish-speaking 1st graders usually can’t read at all. Most of our students come from Spanish-speaking homes, but some of their parents are from African countries.

Examples of books they love: Elephant & Piggy, Pete the Cat, The Pigeon, DogMan, The Magic Treehouse, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Wings of Fire.

We don’t like for them to do graphic novels like DogMan, because we only read with them 30 minutes 3 times a week and those books don’t have enough words in them. One student is reading a YA graphic novel right now, and that one is fine because there are a good amount of words and the book is challenging. Even our best readers are not meeting expectations in school and we’re trying to help them all get there, or as close as we can, before they age out of our program after 6th grade, as well as get them more interested in writing so they can practice spelling and handwriting. Some of our students do well with spelling and handwriting worksheets, but we have some with ADHD-tendencies who need more of a challenge to be able to engage with it well.

I recently got a bunch of the Warrior Cat books for free, but I’m missing the first couple that I need to get before putting them out for the students, so TBD if they like those or not. It’s been a long time since I was a kid, and the only books I remember loving before I was reading above where our students are were Hank the Cowdog, and I’ve never met another person that read those books so I might have had weird taste back then.

What books should we look into adding to our library? What books do your kids/students of these different ages love? All recommendations appreciated!

We also create a personalized curriculum for math practice for all 15 students as well as language arts worksheets, and it’s a ton of work, so please also feel free to recommend resources we could use to make that easier on our small but mighty board!

TLDR; What books do your elementary-aged kids/students love?