High Interest, Low Readability Books for Bilingual Learners

It can be challenging for teachers of English Learners (ELs) to find texts that are both engaging and at an appropriate readability level. This is especially true for older newcomers and other middle- and high-school students still developing English literacy. Books that are both readable and appropriate to their interests and maturity levels may be in scarce supply and difficult for students and teachers to identify. This article provides a list of diverse high-interest, low-readability books for middle grade and young adult students. The books are organized by Lexile score. The Lexile Framework for Reading is a widely used educational tool for matching students with books that are appropriate to their reading level. Texts are assigned Lexile text scores on the basis of word frequency and sentence length, with scores ranging from below 0L (lowest reading level) to 2000L (highest reading level).