It’s summer, finally! Hopefully, a few dozen beach days and barbeques stand between teachers and that back-to-school feeling, but we’re cooking up some new content that we hope will make summer reading a breeze. We now have over 300 titles in our Newsela Novel and Book Studies collection to teach this summer and all year long.

Newsela Novel and Book Studies are curated collections of texts and videos alongside practical instructional guides for some of the most commonly taught books in school. Novel Studies help build background knowledge and create connections so students can better understand classroom books. Teachers can easily help students build skills related to the main idea, point of view, text structure, and more with comprehension quizzes and writing prompts.

Here are some of our favorites in the Novel Studies collection and in our opinion, some of the best summer reads:

• New Kid by Jerry Craft

• Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

• The Giver by Lois Lowry

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

But there’s hundreds more to choose from. If students are still having a hard time getting excited about summer reading, or you find their enthusiasm has dipped at the beginning of next school year, check out some tips from Newsela Fellows Tanisha Boyd & Aishia King on how to spark joy in reading among your students!