Grow a Love of Reading—and Stronger Skills—Stress-Free

Booktrition combines expert-recommended books with a flexible reading routine that changes as your child grows. Whether you’re reading to them, they’re reading to you, or they’re reading on their own... they’re building skills, confidence, and a love of reading.

Imagine your child looking forward to reading time.

Not because they have to—but because they want to. With the right approach, you can turn reading into one of the best parts of your child’s day.

At Booktrition, we believe kids should read what they love—and what helps them grow. The right mix of enjoyment and challenge builds strong reading skills and a lifelong love of books.

But as many parents know, the books kids love aren’t always the ones that help them grow. That’s where you come in.

There are three key ways to support reading at home: you reading to them, them reading to you, and them reading independently. We call these the “Big 3” of raising readers.

The last two won’t apply much for kids in Pre-K and below—but as your child learns to read, they’ll become more important. On the flip side, parents often read aloud less as kids get older, shifting toward listening and independent reading in the later elementary years.

Booktrition’s flexible reading framework grows with your child, helping you know what to focus on—whether you’re sharing stories, cheering them on as they read aloud, or giving them space to explore books on their own.

The “Big 3” of Raising Readers

Research shows that children’s reading needs evolve as they develop. In early childhood, shared reading with a caregiver supports language acquisition and fosters a love of stories. As children gain decoding skills, reading aloud to an adult and independent reading become increasingly important for building fluency and comprehension. Because of this, the reading routine naturally changes as your child grows older, adapting to their developing skills and interests.

What Does the Routine Look Like for Each Age?

Kindergarten

Second Grade

First Grade

Third Grade

The Big Question:

WHICH BOOKS?

From silly to serious, simple to surprising — here’s how to choose books your child will actually love.

This is Booktrition’s sweet spot. We help you find the right books — by topic, genre, and phonics content — to support every step of your child’s reading journey.

The key is knowing how you’ll be using the book.

Here’s how to think about it:

🗣️Reading to Your Child

Choose literally anything.

Books that are too hard for them to read alone are perfect for reading together. This is your chance to stretch their vocabulary, build background knowledge, and just enjoy stories — no matter the topic, reading level, or length of book.

Dinosaurs? Tooth fairies? Talking animals? Yes.
Picture books? Chapter books? Absolutely.
Harry Potter or The Bad Seed for the eighth time? Go for it.

If they’re excited about it, read it. This is how you grow curiosity and connection.

👂 Have Your Child Read to You

Choose from our “just-right” books.

These are books they can mostly read on their own, but may still need occasional help. Think of this time as a mini five- or ten-minute tutoring session where you are listening, assessing, and helping as needed. “Just-right” books are often aligned with what they’re learning in school — especially when it comes to phonics and decoding.

We’ve analyzed the phonics content in these books to match classroom instruction. These are the “stretch zone” books — not too easy, not too hard, but just right for learning.

Read these together, talk through tricky words, and celebrate the effort.

Check out books by age here:

Kindergarten

First Grade

Third Grade

Second Grade

✌️ Independent Reading

Let them take the lead.

This is where reading confidence grows. Let your child choose books to read on their own — even if they’re a little too easy (yay, fluency!) or a little too hard (hello, curiosity!).

Keep offering those “just right” books, but don’t be afraid to mix in graphic novels, re-read favorites, or explore a whole pile of random interests. The goal is not perfection — it’s momentum and fostering a love of reading.

Booktrition Data

Throughout the site, and unlike publisher’s in-house leveling systems, books are systematically placed within each grade level to reflect the scope and sequence of the phonics taught in the classroom. This means the leveling of each book is scientific and data-driven, without the bias and inconsistency inherent to other rubrics. So just how exactly did Booktrition do this? By collecting the data of course! And, to be precise, we’re talking about phonetic data. For each book from kindergarten through most of second grade, Booktrition collected and cataloged every single word, totaling over 21,000 words. But why do this? By leading the leveling system within the Booktrition website with phonetic data, books were able to be placed appropriately and analyzed for decodability. On average, a book was placed within in a designated part of the school year if the data found that the combined highly phonetic and sight words totaled at least 80%. In the aggregate of all data collected, there are also excellent learning opportunities for our young readers, parents and educators. Want to see more data broken down by grade? We invite you to take a look at The Data page.

The Data

This means the leveling of each book is scientific and data-driven, without the bias and inconsistency inherent to other rubrics.

In addition to the science, our book recommendations are selectively and artfully chosen because of their child-friendly themes: empathy, kindness and love, and with topics these readers will find engrossing. Because in addition to growing young, well-rounded readers, we also need to help grow young and well-rounded humans!

Booktrition eliminates the guesswork from choosing the optimal books to give to young readers for independent* reading. By combining the best of art and science, Booktrition recommends books for readers in kindergarten through third grade.

Throughout the site, and unlike publisher’s in-house leveling systems, books are systematically placed within each grade level to reflect the scope and sequence of the phonics taught in the classroom.

We define “independent reading” as reading alone or reading aloud to a parent or teacher with minimal help from the caregiver. Research shows young readers make more reading gains when a parent, teacher or caregiver helps to “scaffold” reading through use of properly-leveled books (where the child is able to decode 80%-95% of words, without guessing based on pictures or context clues). This yields the very best results particularly through second grade, when learners are actively still acquiring new phonics skills. More on this, and so much more, on our blog and instagram.