Children’s literature for teaching the alphabet. Teachers can read the alphabet books to teach letters and sounds or add them to a classroom bookshelf!
As I’ve taught primary grades for years now, I’ve consistently leaned on several good alphabet books to help teach my students the alphabet. Teaching letters and sounds can be a monotonous task, but with these alphabet books, I’ve been able to make learning letters and sounds fun! These are, in my opinion, the best children’s books to read when teaching the basic skills of alphabet recognition and recall. Read these popular books aloud, share them in your small groups, or add them to your bookshelf!
Alphabet Books: Top 16 Books to Teach Letters and Sounds
1. A is for Apple (Trace and Flip Fun!) by Georgie Birkett is a board book with lift-a-flap pages bright pictures, and large letters kids can trace with their fingers.
2. Alphabet City by Stephen Johnson is kind-of like a real-life, “search and find” alphabet book. With no words on the page, kids can look through and find letters in photos of everyday city objects.
3. A book with a message, The Alphabet Tree by Leo Lionni, presents students with not only the letters themselves but also how standing together gives strength.
4. Need a classic that always pleases? Dr. Seuss’ ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book! by Dr. Seuss is the perfect way to introduce or review letters.
5. Q is for Duck: An Alphabet Guessing Game by Michael Folsum is an alphabet book full of riddles and humor, and kids love the funny illustrations. Let them try to figure out why the pictures don’t truly start with the letter, and make it a fun game.
6. So the letter Z wants to be treated equally, and pretty soon, all the letters decide they want to go first, too! AlphaOops!: The Day Z Went First by Alethea Kontis shows the hilarious chaos that ensues.
7. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. has long been a classroom favorite, with its rhythmic sentences and colorful illustrations. Try it and see!
8. Teach a lesson about the alphabet as well as jobs around the world following some cute little peas in LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
9. Hands-on learners will love Alphablock by Christopher Franceschelli with its large letter cut-outs and interactive pages you can poke your fingers through and peek around the edges of the letter forms to find hidden surprises behind them.
10. The Hidden Alphabet by Laura Vaccaro Seeger will entertain readers with lift-the-flap, visual surprises while showing pictures of interesting objects with their beginning letters.
11. Tilt the pages of The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst to see letters transform into interesting images of other things!
12. Silly and cute animals are finding all sorts of things to get into and experience in the A to Z board book by Sandra Boynton. Your students will giggle as they learn letters and their sounds.
13. The Sleepy Little Alphabet: A Bedtime Story from Alphabet Town by Judy Sierra will provide your students a short and sweet story that they can relate to – the letters don’t want to go to sleep at night until they do just one more thing…
14. Each letter has his/her own little background story, and kids will enjoy finding out about them in Once Upon an Alphabet: Short Stories for All the Letters by Oliver Jeffers.
15. Curious George Learns the Alphabet by H. A. Rey is a great book for teaching simple sight words in addition to basic letters and sounds. Watch and read as the man in the yellow hat teaches Curious George about the alphabet.
16. How did the alphabet get its name? You’ll find out in Al Pha’s Bet by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.
If you teach primary grades and are looking for books to read to your class about the alphabet, then you’ve come to the right place. Any one of these 16 favorite books to teach letters will keep your kids engaged and entertained. They’ll recognize all their letters in no time! Do YOU have any favorites to add to this list?
creative ways to learn and practice the alphabet
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Thanks for putting this together. I recognized a few but will definitely check out the others!