We are grateful to all teachers and professors from around the world who have taken up the challenge of teaching reading, writing, and critical thinking skills to the world's students. Please use the free resources at our website to awaken a life-long passion for literature and learning in your students.
... and please share this resource with colleagues
Building foundations for lifelong literacy
Toddlers and children in pre-kindergarten have fun and build confidence playing with words. Enjoy this selection of nursery rhymes, counting songs, hink pink riddles, and read-aloud stories to encourage the very earliest readers.
We also offer a collection of Yummy Stories.
Classic children's stories, fairytales and folktales with beautiful illustrations, as well as some text exemplars, specifically for pre-k to elementary school.
Beatrix Potter, Aesop, Mother Goose, Grimm, Andersen, Kipling, Carroll, Hawthorne, Margery Williams, and many more! Great resource for parents.
Teach Fairy Tales with our recommended storiries, get new ideas for lesson plans, discussion questions, and useful links for all grade levels.
The Secret Garden, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, Treasure Island, Little Women, Black Beauty, and more to inspire independent reading.
Engaging literature for growing minds
Game-changing learning tools your students will actually enjoy! Our interactive study guides transform classic literature into engaging, modern learning experiences with flashcards, interactive timelines, drag-and-drop activities, and instant feedback.
Have your students read the short story or poem, then go immediately to the study guides.
Why teachers love them:
Try The Necklace study guide - it's one of our most popular! Also available for The Lottery, The Tell-Tale Heart, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Monkey's Paw, The Story of an Hour, and more titles being added regularly.
Free for all teachers and students. No sign-up required!
Resource guides by title and genre, designed for MS & HS teachers and students to understand the plot, analyze characters, historic context, literary devices, and meaningful quotes.
We offer discussion questions, paired reading and useful links for your lesson plans: Moby-Dick, The Call of the Wild, The Gift of the Magi, The Little Match Girl, The Monkey's Paw, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Pit and the Pendulum, and more!
Genres include: Feminist Literature, Dark Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Gothic Literature, and Fairy Tales. More guides coming!
Vol I and Vol II. Note that some of these stories are suitable for college-level course work.
If high school students have not read some of the iconic stories on the Middle School list, please consider assigning some for extra credit. We also offer a guide to Russian Writers.
Exploring the beauty of words
Fifty great poems for middle school, high school, and beyond... Poetry exemplars to inspire students to enjoy the power of well chosen words.
Whitman, Frost, Carroll, Dickinson, Hughes, Emerson, John Donne, Longfellow, Millay, Li Bai, T.S. Eliot, Akhmatova, Browning, Wilde, Teasdale, Coleridge, Shakespeare, and many more.
Especially selected poems to engage children from pre-k to elementary school, including exemplars and poems your students will enjoy for their whimsy and imagination.
Popular poems children love:
Plus works by Dickinson, Browning, Frost, Millay, Lear, Mother Goose, Kipling, Tennyson, Williams, Alcott, Lazarus, Richards, and more!
The haiku poems by Matsuo Basho are simply stunning favorites for building literacy skills.
His short story, The Aged Mother, is wonderful for older children through adult. Enjoy Basho's beautiful contributions to literature for yourself!
A selection of popular idioms and their meaning, for students and English language learners.
Literature in its historical context
Students will better understand historical context by reading works from authors who were there and shaped events of their day.
Essential historic speeches:
Authors include Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, Roosevelt, King Jr., Stowe, Hughes, Douglass, Stanton, Bierce. Easy-access to the U.S. Constitution, summary of the Amendments, notable historic essays, speeches, persuasive writing exemplars.
Profiles of activist authors who wrote about issues of racial equality and influenced public opinion. These powerful works shaped American history and continue to inspire readers today.
Essential works to teach:
Also featuring works by Northup, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and more. Includes relevant historic documents and reconstruction amendments.
A collection of short stories, books, essays, letters, poems and speeches about the American Civil War.
Crane, Lincoln, Stowe, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Whitman, Edward Everett Hale, Alcott, Howe, and Sullivan Ballou.
A collection of poems, stories, novels capturing the brutal realities of fear and loss during wartime. Interesting propaganda posters students can use as springboards for further research.
You might also appreciate Foodie Books & Wartime Recipes
American authors and historical figures have interesting stories of their own; biographies written especially for older children.
Make learning fun and interactive! Our collection of educational games helps students develop critical thinking skills, build vocabulary, and reinforce literary concepts through engaging gameplay.
Featured games include:
Perfect for warm-up activities, brain breaks, or review sessions. All games are free to play and work on any device!
Curated selections of great American literature
A curated collection of literary excellence! Our 100 Great Short Stories features masterworks spanning multiple genres, time periods, and cultural perspectives. From classic tales to hidden gems, this collection exposes students to diverse writing styles and storytelling techniques.
Perfect for:
Featured authors include: O. Henry, Kate Chopin, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and many more literary giants.
Each story has been selected for its literary merit, student engagement potential, and teaching value. Explore the full collection →
Appropriate for middle school and high school students, these stories can be read in five minutes or less, sorted by mood (witty, introspective, morality tales, other-worldly) to engage students in reading, particularly those who might be reluctant to commit to a novel or long story.
Student favorites include:
Perfect for busy class periods, homework assignments, or introducing reluctant readers to the joy of literature!
Sorted into two sections: one for middle school/high school through adult, the other for elementary children. These stories offer that "good feeling" which makes reading such a joy.
Heartwarming favorites include:
Authors include O. Henry, Oscar Wilde, Kathleen Norris, Leo Tolstoy, T.S. Arthur, Bret Harte, Willa Cather, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Anton Chekhov, and many more.
The usual suspects: Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, The Secret Garden, Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter, The Call of the Wild, The Awakening, The Jungle, and many other classics.
Essential reads include:
This is an introductory page that helps students get acquainted with the short story form and find the answers to some commonly asked questions.
What's the definition of a short story, how long is a good short story, how are short stories different from poems and novels, where can I find examples of good short stories?
We know this is controversial, but we've included public domain literature exemplars we know you may be teaching.
Elementary School texts
Middle School texts
High School texts
Stories for special occasions and themes
When I was a student in the younger grades, it was always a special treat when Halloween and Christmas rolled around and the teacher would read seasonal-specific stories to us.
Halloween Stories for Children (ES)
Halloween Stories (MS/HS)
The Gothic, Ghost, Horror & Weird Library (HS)
Children's Christmas Stories (ES)
Christmas Stories (MS/HS)
Christmas Carols (ES/MS/HS)
No literature curriculum is complete without Shakespeare! Whether you're teaching sonnets to introduce poetic devices or using the plays to explore timeless themes of love, ambition, betrayal, and redemption, Shakespeare's works remain essential reading for students at all levels.
Popular Sonnets:
Perfect for teaching metaphor, imagery, and poetic structure:
Essential Plays:
This page highlights more resources at the site, including historical documents, a collection of African-American literature, a listing of women authors, poetry, essays, fairy-tales, and more.
D.H. Lawrence's analysis of Moby Dick, The Scarlett Letter, Fenimore Cooper, Poe, Hardy, Melville, Whitman, and Franklin.
Expert perspectives and teaching inspiration
The Catcher in the Rye is not public domain material, so I cannot host it at this site, but many of you will teach it during your career.
As you plan for your class and teach the material, I hope you will find this work by teacher Shaun L. Kelly to be inspirational and helpful to you and your students: Growing Old With Holden
Rob Velella is an independent scholar of American Literature. He maintains The American Literary Blog and holds an MA in English & Publishing.
He is passionate about literary history and his extensive knowledge is on display at his blog. I include him here as a potential resource that can be booked to come to your school or classroom to provide a living history performance. His most popular dramatic personae are Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.