Read Aloud Hall of Fame #18: ROOM ON THE BROOM

You need a book. A can’t miss book. A read aloud that will cast a wide net and pull everyone in. This is the idea behind The 100 Scope Notes Read Aloud Hall of Fame.

In each post I’ll share a read aloud that has never let me down. Some will be obvious and popular. Others lesser-known. All will be story time gold.

Click here to see all the Read Aloud Hall of Fame inductees.

Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler

Tell me if this happens to you too. You hear about a book being a great read aloud, but you’ve never read it. You might even start to think in the back of your head, “Well, if it was so great, I would have already read it, so therefore it probably isn’t that great.” Then you finally read it with kids, and you’re like, “Yep, they were right. This is a great read aloud.” This is my experience with Room on the Broom. I was a librarian for an embarrassingly long time before I finally read this book.

And now I’m mad it took me so long. What was I thinking (oh, I guess I just told you in the previous paragraph)? I love The Gruffalo, another Donaldson/Scheffler collab, but I might like Room on the Broom even more. The main reason? The element of surprise.

About halfway through this rhyming-and-repetition masterclass of a story, all heck breaks loose: the broom snaps and a fire-breathing dragon shows up out of nowhere. The witch is saved by the animals she befriended earlier in the tale, leading to the creation of a new and improved broom. Funny, surprising, and featuring a completely satisfying conclusion. This is a Halloween staple, folks.

Filed under: Read Aloud Hall of Fame