The Boxcar Children Shelf

For the child who just read The Boxcar Children and wants the next one tonight. There are nineteen originals and more than a hundred after that, and the first twelve are the ones a first or second grader reads alone, in order, one after another, until they are a reader. That is what this shelf is: books two through ten, the 12-book box set, and the complete 19-book treasury. Buy the box. A child who finishes twelve chapter books in a season has done something most schools cannot make happen.

How to use it: one book a week, read alone, then tell a parent what happened. That is narration, and it is the whole of second-grade language arts if you let it be. The Magic Tree House 1-28 box is on this shelf for the same reader, because the two series trade off perfectly: a Boxcar mystery, then a trip to the dinosaurs, then a Boxcar mystery.

Two more things: The Read-Aloud Year is the shelf for the books you read to them while they read these to themselves, and the $49 map builds the year around your actual child. Not sure this is the right shelf? Five questions will tell you.