The Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Book List, K-8, 2006-2008 Edition (The Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Book List, K-8)

This book has two sections: One lists books by title, and gives each a level rating from A to Z (or WB for wordless books and LB for Label books). For reference, Goodnight Moon is level H, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is level V. The genre of each title is listed too: Traditional Literature, Realistic Fiction, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Biography, and Information Book. The second section has all the same information, but it is sorted by level.

This sounds like a great idea. However, I found the usefulness of the book very limited by two things:

1. The list is almost exclusively made up of books in pre-leveled book series. Most of them are not available at the public library, and are not available for sale as individual books, only in large sets.

2. For most titles, the author is not listed. This makes it very difficult to find the books in the library database, especially since many of them have generic titles like "My Little Sister" and "Turtles."

This book came quickly and in great shape. It's been an invaluable tool in my classroom and lesson planning.

This book is much more comprehensive than one my school was using. I had a crate of books that I could not find the correct level for because the book my school used was so incomplete. I decided to spend the $ on this one and I am very glad I did. EVery book in that crate was in this book for me to level. Now I guard the book under lock and key because all my colleagues want to borrrow it :-) Worth the investment in my opinion! The only thing that I think would be better is if the publisher offered an online version included in the cost that would provide updates to the book as new titles become available.

This is a great resource book for the classroom teacher all the way up to the school administrator. It provides numerous titles to select quality reading materials for the diverse classroom.

It has been almost a decade since Fountas and Pinnell came out with their list of leveled books -- and I take my hat off to them. It is a wonderful resource for teachers who are interested in matching kids to books and keeping kids mainly in books that are "just right" for them. The list, I believe, has grown through the contributions of many teachers nationwide, and perhaps even world-wide. Isn't it about time that a new teacher with no money in his/her pockets should be able to access this list online at no cost? Many children would be helped. A lot of money has been made on the Fountas and Pinnell books -- maybe it's time to give rank and file teachers a Christmas present or just a "We're With Ya" present in the form of a complete online database so they can quickly ascertain a book's level. If this has been done, I'd be interested in locating it. So far, my searches have not turned up the Fountas and Pinnell list online.