It can be hard to find discussion guides for children’s books on the web.  With more and more parents taking on the leading of children’s book groups or parent/child book clubs, there is an increasing desire for discussion guides for kids’ books.  Luckily, librarians, publishers and booklovers are making more guides available online.

Here are some of the resources I’ve encountered or used to help brave parent book leaders find discussion questions for children’s books for their clubs.

Multnomah County Library  - Book discussion guides for books selected by librarians to work as group discussion books.  I see titles that would work with 4^th – 10^th graders. http://www.multcolib.org/talk/guides.htmlAlso, this library created a list of universal questions to ask on any book (in case questions aren’t available for the title you wish to discuss). http://www.multcolib.org/talk/universalquestions.html

Hennepin County Library - Book discussion guides for books selected by librarians to work as group discussion books.  This is a smaller list than Multnomah with titles ranging in appeal from 3^rd to 8^th grade level. http://www.hclib.org/pub/bookspace/BookListAction.cfm?list_num=468KidsReads.com - Part of The Book Report Network, a commercial group of websites that share book reviews, author profiles and interviews, excerpts of new releases, literary games and contests.  Twenty or so discussion guides to children’s books suited for grades 4^th – 8^th.  These guides are longer and include page numbers for sections to discuss. http://www.kidsreads.com/clubs/

Random House - Publisher Guides. Book discussion guides are organized by grade level with many lower grade level titles which can be hard to find.  This resource has more titles covered than the others.  The guides are designed with teachers in mind and so include curriculum connections along with the discussion questions. http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/guides/grade/

Scholastic - Publisher Guides. Book discussion guides for both popular and award winning titles from this publisher.  The site includes a guide to the Bone graphic novels and the early Harry Potter books. http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/tradebooks/discussionguides.htm

Powell’s Bookstore - Bookmuse Kids’ Corner. You need to create a username and password to use this resource created by a large online bookstore, but it does have guides to picture books and primary grade level books which can be hard to find (kindergarten to 3^rd grade).  You can browse their guides by grade level which is a plus. http://www.bookmuse.com/pages/notes/kidscorner.asp

The Literary Link - Designed as a resource for teachers, this website features longer discussion guides for books ranging from 5^th grade to teen appeal. http://theliterarylink.com/questions_otherbooks.html

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Books for Youth, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.