Horrid Henry #bookaday August 9th

Now that August is here, and more than a week in, I am looking at the PILES of books I brought home from my classroom library that I wanted to read.  Many of the books are ones I want to become more familiar with so I can recommend them to students and share book talks.  I'm especially on the lookout for books that boys might enjoy along with girls. As a reader, I tend to gravitate to books where the girl is the main character and I wanted to be more mindful of choosing books everyone can enjoy and relate to as readers.  

Horrid Henry was new to me, although it was published in 1994 so not a new series.  It was very funny! I'm actually thinking of doing it for my first chapter book read aloud since it is 4 short stories.  Some of the work I want to do with my third graders early in the year is around answering the question, "What kind of character is ______?" This question is featured in the Independent Reading Assessment by Jennifer Serravallo and students often don't know how to answer it.  Horrid Henry would be a great way to model how to think through that question and find text based evidence to support our answer.  

Since this is a series, I'm thinking that after I read this book aloud, students might be interested in reading more Horrid Henry on their own.  It's listed as a Level M book, which is a comfortable level for many students early in the year.  I'm excited to add more Horrid Henry books to my classroom library!