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Students learning English as a new language are the fastest‐growing group in U.S. schools today. These students speak many languages, their reading levels cover a wide range, and they experience great cognitive demands as they learn both language and content in order to participate fully in class. Literature can play a critical role in immersing children in a new language, and school and classroom libraries are integral parts of this process. This article offers guidelines for selecting fiction, poetry, and nonfiction literature that can facilitate the language development and reading comprehension of English learners along with suggested lists of children's books for each genre. A variety of techniques for sharing literature is also suggested, including Reading aloud regularly to provide a fluent model of reading Drawing attention to featured authors or books with bulletin board displays Spotlighting a book of the week through book talks or by reading excerpts aloud Teachers also need to step back and provide time and freedom of choice for students to enjoy books and continue to add to the collection as students' language proficiencies develop and their reading tastes mature.

, 2000). Students were taught from an inquiry-based approach as the teacher read aloud each book, and asked students what they noticed. Students reviewed the picture books to guide them as they were challenged to improve their writing. Findings from the study illustrate that picture books as mentor texts can help secondary students of all ability levels improve their word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions in narrative writing as measured by a writing trait rubric created by Vicki Spandel and adapted by Jim Burke. Picture books were tools that helped students think and act like writers. Conclusions also highlighted the lack of word choice and sentence fluency instruction in the students' formative years. This study shed light on the abstract nature of sentence fluency, and an effective way to mitigate this problem. This study provided a new angle with which to teach the writing traits through narrative composition instruction, and teacher modeling. Further, this study adds to the literature of effective high school instruction as picture books as mentor texts are less common in the high school English Language Arts classroom.

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To craft engaging nonfiction prose, young writers should focus on a specific idea or concept of interest and use acclaimed children's books as mentor texts to help them understand options for developing their ideas. In this article, the authors provide examples of high‐quality children's nonfiction for exploring various formats and text structures and for developing effective expressive voice and rich language—all craft techniques associated with excellent expository informational writing and consistent with the Common Core State Standards. Specific discussion questions and activities are included.