“Mom, I don’t have anything to read!”

Sometimes when I hear those words, I can hand my child the perfect book to drown out the whine. Other times, its met with, “I don’t want to read anything I have!” and I have to just walk away.

Now besides trying to rack your own brain to find the perfect book for your child, there are many different avenues to help get your child out of a “I don’t have anything to read!” rut. They include taking them to the library to ask a librarian, the bookstore to ask an employee there for suggestions, or if school’s in session, having your child ask their teacher for some ideas. However, I recently found a solution that turned the responsibility completely to my daughter.

This book, which I got from a Scholastic book order, has been a godsend for my daughter (and by default, for me). We love the way this book is organized and the suggested titles in the book. Here’s the Table of Contents and the Index in the back:

Things we love: the Table of Contents is organized by age. This makes it easy for my child to focus on certain titles now, as well as what kinds of books to look forward to as she gets older. In the back, the titles are organized by genre, so if she decides she wants to read a book about families, she can find titles there.

Additionally, when it comes to the individual titles, there’s more than just the title on the page, and here are some examples:

There’s a summary of the book (with no spoilers!), suggestions of what to read next, a rating scale to fill in, and a spot to write comments. I love this, because it will be a keepsake to look at many years from now. For example, for The Story of Ferdinand, my daughter wrote, “This book is going to be a movie in 2018 or 2017”. I think this will be great to read and remember in the future, even if we no longer have the actual Ferdinand book.

At any rate, as you can see from the pictures, my daughter has been using this book to decide what to read, and to keep track of books we’ve already read. She’s even taken it to the library a couple of times to help her check out books. So if in your #RaisingReaders quest you are tired of hearing, “I don’t have anything to read”, I would strongly recommend this book for your child (and your sanity).