Cool Tools for Bibliophiles

Since we afterschool and my DS is learning to read I ‘m always looking for books for him. (I’m looking for books for me too...but that’s a different story.) Last week, to celebrate Children’s Book Week I published some links to sites that list award-winning children’s books, recommended books for young readers and children’s classics.

While doing my research, I came across two great tools for budding bibliophiles…actually for parents of budding bibliophiles. OK, one at least, is for any Bibliophile.

For parents of children learning to read, struggling to read or reading voraciously there is the Lexile Reader Search. You may be familiar with Lexile Scores. Your child’s teacher may be able to provide that for you.

Lexiles help you know if a book is too easy, too difficult, or just right for a reader. Young people can best grow their reading abilities -- and learn to love reading in the process -- by choosing books in their reading "sweet spot" that are about subjects they're interested in. Knowing the difficulty of a book and the ability of a reader helps you match books to readers to maximize their success and enjoyment. Lexiles make this matching possible.

On the Lexile reader site you simply enter your child’s reading level (either his/her Lexile score or grade reading level) and interests and a list of books appropriate for your child appears. Cool, no?

If, like me, you may want to try to be eco and find that perfect book at the library, the next tool is for you. Since we afterschool with another family, we are often searching for one particular book we can both use. We prefer to borrow rather than buy…at least initially.

And so, I was excited to find Worldcat.org since it will save us a significant amount of time searching from library to library to find the book we need. Particularly if you live in suburbia where you have your choice of several different library systems, you’ll find this tool helpful.

At Worldcat you can enter the name, title or ISBN of any book and it will tell you which libraries in your area own the book. Living in Southern California, I have library cards to several different libraries. Rather than visit each one or each ones website to find a book I need, I can enter the book into Worldcat and find it right away. Worldcat also lists at which site you can buy the book at the best price. That’s a nice extra.

With these two tools my adventures in books just got easier and a little more eco. What tools have you found to encourage your budding bibliophile??


For more great Works for me Wednesday ideas visit Rocks in My Dryer