School reading lists by the numbers: coverage, size and sources
"School reading list" covers several real things: state-published recommended-reading lists, state award programs (the nominee slates teachers and librarians build displays around), district lists and national curriculum exemplar lists. This page reports the size and shape of that published corpus — how many states publish, how big their lists run, which grades they target, and how many distinct sources back the data.
The ten largest state lists
| # | State | Assignments | Share of state-linked |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michigan | 454 | 6.6% |
| 2 | Nevada | 299 | 4.3% |
| 3 | New Jersey | 299 | 4.3% |
| 4 | Kansas | 276 | 4.0% |
| 5 | Maine | 265 | 3.8% |
| 6 | Arizona | 262 | 3.8% |
| 7 | Oregon | 251 | 3.6% |
| 8 | New Hampshire | 239 | 3.5% |
| 9 | Hawaii | 219 | 3.2% |
| 10 | Washington | 213 | 3.1% |
Full 47-state table in the CSV download. List size reflects what a state publishes, not how much it reads: states with long-running award programs contribute more rows.
Which grades the lists target
| Grade band | Assignments | Share |
|---|---|---|
| K-2 | 1,029 | 7.8% |
| 3-5 | 5,417 | 40.9% |
| 6-8 | 4,725 | 35.6% |
| 9-12 | 2,087 | 15.7% |
Elementary and middle grades dominate published lists — high-school assigned reading is set more often by course syllabus than by a state-published list, which is why survey-based "most taught" rankings skew older than these. See most-assigned books.
What kind of assignment
| Category | Assignments | Share |
|---|---|---|
| recommended | 13,214 | 99.7% |
| required | 41 | 0.3% |
| supplementary | 3 | 0.0% |
Most published state lists are recommendations rather than mandates — "required" rows are the minority, and we label them as the source does.
Provenance
- 100% of assignment rows (13,258 of 13,258) carry the URL of the document they came from.
- 121 distinct source documents back the corpus — state education-department lists, award-program slates, curricula and district lists.
- 82 curricula and 20 districts are tracked as reference tables alongside 50 states and 13 grade levels.
Questions this page answers
How many states publish school reading lists?
47 of 50 states are represented in this corpus with at least one state-linked list entry. Coverage grows as new state programs are verified and added — the dataset snapshot date above tells you which vintage you're reading.
How many books are on a typical school reading list?
The median state contributes 130 assignments across all grades and programs. Individual lists are smaller: a single grade-level award slate is typically 10–25 titles, and states publish several per year.
Which book appears on reading lists in the most states?
Wonder by R.J. Palacio appears on state-linked lists in 29 states (148 assignments overall) — the widest state spread in the corpus.
Download the data
- school-reading-list-statistics.csv All 47 states, band split, categories and provenance counts. Free, CORS-enabled, CC BY 4.0 — reuse with a link.
- assigned-books.csv The full (book × state × grade) assignment join.
- All data downloads →
Cite this page
<a href="https://bookstatistics.com/school-reading-list-statistics/">School Reading List Statistics</a>. Book Statistics, a Figures Bureau site. [School Reading List Statistics](https://bookstatistics.com/school-reading-list-statistics/). Book Statistics, a Figures Bureau site. [url=https://bookstatistics.com/school-reading-list-statistics/]School Reading List Statistics[/url]. Book Statistics, a Figures Bureau site. Method note
Counts are of assignment records (one appearance of one book on one source-verified list for one grade), snapshot 2026-07-21. State counts exclude national-curriculum rows, which are reported separately above. Full detail: methodology. The narrative companion is Reading Statistics 2026 on readinglist.school, which browses these lists state by state.
Related reference pages
- Assigned books statistics The corpus in reference form.
- Most-assigned books, ranked The living top-50 table.
- Book length statistics Median pages by grade.
Data + analysis: bookstatistics.com, CC BY 4.0. A Figures Bureau study.