The Joke (Books) in Nonfiction

They are also underrated in that realm.  They are part of the 800's and can be a great way to get younger students into the Dewey Decimal.  In fact, the one series I find to be popular with 1st-5th grade is Michael Dahl's Read-It! Joke Books.  I have my 5th graders reading me jokes out of that book every couple of checkout days.  It never seems to matter to my kids how easy a book looks if it is funny.  You can get a preview of the books here.

Joke books are also a good way to teach partner work, fluency, and giving students think time.  When I was teaching the 3rd grade about the 818 section, I modeled reading aloud jokes and asking for students to guess what the answer could be.  This provided them with a safe environment to not have the correct answer because almost the whole class wanted to guess.  I then asked them to read jokes aloud to each other and they would wait for their classmates to come up with an answer if no answer was guessed right away. 

Image from capstonepub.com