Read Across America: Picture Books Set in Every State

For our 2023-2024 homeschool year, I took Nathaniel on a tour of the United States through stories. I am excited to share the book list through a series of posts organized by region.

I love picking out picture books to read to Nathaniel. While they are picture books, many that I’ve chosen have advanced themes: the Underground Railroad, fathers working away from the family, African American children being denied schooling, settling the prairie frontier, immigration and longing for home, the Flu Epidemic of 1918 and children being sent away from home to stay well. We learned the basics about each state from our textbook, but these stories were the heart and soul of our social studies learning for the year.

I  pulled our weekly vocabulary words from these books. I also created an anchor - read - apply reading comprehension activity sheet for each book to strengthen Nathaniel’s reading comprehension skills. These helped us connect with the main character and glean more from the stories. Perhaps if time permits in the future I can prepare those for public use and add the files for download.

Until then… enjoy the list! Click on each photo below for the regional list. Each book is a treasure and worthy of being added to a home library. Most have additional information in the back of the book that sets the story in context of history and place.  A couple of the books are currently out of print, but can be found used.