Book review sites can save you a ton of time when you’re an ELA teacher…
Think about it. You don’t have time to read 25 books in order to choose a handful of good ones for your Middle School class. You’re busy and you should be living your life! (I’m sure your spouse and kids agree with me on this…)
That’s why I compiled a list of the best book review sites, along with the pros and cons of each.
Some of these sites aren’t even necessarily supposed to be book review sites—but they do the job well enough.
Book Review Sites for Your ELA Class
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit that reviews literature, movies, TV, apps, and games so you can see what’s appropriate for your students.
If you go to their Book Reviews section, you’ll see thousands of reviews of books for kids ages 4 to 14+. You can then filter based on age, which will help you narrow down your search to books on your students’ level.
Just click on 11, 12 and/or 13 in the gray box to the right, and the website will pull up all applicable books.
Or you can search for a specific book in the search bar at the top of the page. Whatever you need!!
One nice thing about Common Sense Media is that they give you an instant overall view of how appropriate or beneficial a book is based on different categories. Here’s what I mean by that:
Image Source: Common Sense Media
Perma-Bound is unique in that it actually recommends reading lists and gives awards—as well as allows you to purchase the books through them.
For books on their site, they provide in-depth reviews from a variety of trusted sources, such as Publishers Weekly, ALA Booklist, Kirkus Reviews and more.
So Perma-Bound is great if you need good book recommendations … but if you have a specific book in mind that you want to read a review about, there’s a chance they may not have it.
The other downside of Perma-Bound is that you have to be registered in order to search for books on their site.
What Booklist lacks in aesthetics it makes up for in searchability. The nice thing about looking for reviews on Booklist is their advanced search function, which will help you if you can only remember the book’s author or a word from the title.
You can narrow down your search further when you select “Reviews Only” for the Content and “Books for Youth” in the Audience section.
Another great thing about Booklist is that you don’t have to be a subscriber to have access to their reviews. BUT if you do subscribe, you get access to a ton more reviews you might find useful.
Goodreads is another great site for reviews—you’ll find a ton of them there!! Plus, you can easily search for a title you have in mind with their search bar at the top of the page.
I will say, though, that there’s no simple way to browse books for your students’ grade. You have to search for something related and then click on the “Middle Grade” shelf option it offers to the right.
Or… you could simply click this link since I did it for you!
Scholastic is another one of the best book review sites. But I have to say, I have mixed feelings about how it organizes its reviews… the site lets you select books based on grade or based on genre.
The only downside to this is that there’s no search bar. So if you’re trying to find a review for a particular book, you have to know the grade level it’s written for or what genre it is.
Granted, that shouldn’t be too hard. A quick Google search can help with this in most cases, I’m sure. But if not, you may have to click on several different grades or genres and search with “Ctrl+f” (if you’re using Windows and “Command+f” on a Mac) until you find the book you’re looking for.
We go to Amazon for reviews of tons of other products … so why not books?
Amazon might actually surprise you with how helpful the book reviews are. After all, millions of people use Amazon, so the site often has a ton of reviews to look through (as long as the book is at least semi-popular).
To read the reviews, just search for the book you have in mind and then scroll down until you see the comments/reviews. Some people might be commenting on the packaging and delivery, but you’ll also find some helpful insights into the content itself.
Use Multiple Book Review Sites
None of these book review sites are perfect. I’ll be the first to say that after using each of them!!! 😊
But the great thing about having this list is that if one site doesn’t have a review you need, then another of these book review sites might.
Because of that, I recommend saving or bookmarking this article so you can easily access these book review sites whenever you need!
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