Five Faves: Chapter Books for Second Graders

Second grade can be a hard time to find books on your reading level, let alone ones that you are excited about! Here are some of our favorite beginner chapter books that would be great to read as a second grader:

Kitty and the Moonlight Rescue
Written by Paula Harrison
Illustrated by Jenny Lovile
New York: Greenwillow Books, 2019. Intermediate. 118 pages.

Kitty wants to be a superhero, just like her mom. But, maybe when it's not so dark and scary outside. When one of her cat friends needs help, Kitty overcomes her fears to be a hero! This book is a great transitional chapter book with a couple of pictures on the action-packed pages.

The School is Alive!
Written by Jack Chabert
Illustrated by Sam Ricks
New York: Branches/Scholastic Inc, 2014. Intermediate. 90 pages.

Sam Graves takes his job as the school's hall monitor very seriously. So when he discovers that the school is alive and is plotting against the students, he must do everything he can to protect them. With the fast-paced plot and pictures on every page, this is a great beginner chapter book.

The Birthday Castle
By Dee Romito

New York: Aladdin Quix, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division, 2020. Intermediate. 88 pages.

Best friends Caleb and Jax are starting a fort-building business! Their first job is to build a castle for Analise's birthday party. This is a short and sweet chapter book that would be perfect for your little engineers.

Happy Paws
Written by Vicky Fang
Illustrated by Christine Nishiyama
New York, NY: Scholastic Inc. 2020. Intermediate. 71 pages.

Layla and her robot rock band have decided to turn the old Happy Days Amusement Park into and amusement park for dogs! This book reads a little more like a comic book than a chapter book, so it would be a great transitional book.

Monster and Boy
Written by Hannah Barnaby

Illustrated by Anoosha Syed
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2020. Intermediate. 132 pages.

Monster lives under Boy's bed. Monster loves Boy, but unfortunately Boy does not believe in monsters. That is until Monster pops out from under the bed, and the two become friends. This cute chapter book is so much fun! Your little reader will love the story.

Comments

Funny Farm by Mark Teague 2009

There are things I liked about Mark Teague's newest book, Funny Farm , and things I didn't like. Where should I start? I'll do the "didn'ts" first. The illustrations show animals personified. Well, some of the animals are. The main characters, Edward, and his farm family relatives, all dogs, are humanized. They stand upright, do farm chores, eat at a table, wear clothes, knit (yes, with paws) and sleep in beds. Most everybody else on and around the farm, who are also animals, act like animals. They are outside, roll in mud, live in the barn, and require care from their owners. It struck me the most on the page spread where there are pigs playing in puddle in the rain and Edward, a black and white boxer, watches from inside the house. I thought "You're a dog! Go play with them!" But, alas, he can't, seeing as how he goes through his entire visit to the farm wearing a suit and red bow tie. Another picture that bothered me was the maple syrup pa...

The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester 2008

J Fiction 328 pages I almost didn't finish this book. I got to Chapter 4, and was just about ready to quit (a kind of slow story about a girl, name of Piper McCloud, who discovers she can fly, parents freak out, she becomes a social outcast, yadda, yadda) but suddenly, right there in Chapter 4, the story takes a sharp turn and becomes really interesting . Piper finds herself in the company of others like her, but not "fliers", and under the care and authority of Dr. Hellion. I won't even tell you any more. Read this book. Forester does a great job of keeping you wondering who's the good guy and who's the bad? Piper is a likeable, strong, endearing character that girl readers will enjoy. But don't NOT give it to boys! The main male character is an extremely intelligent young man who is one of the ones you wonder about . . . good or bad? This is a good one, well worth your time.

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages. Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

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