Alan Gratz — assigned in US schools

Alan Gratz in the US-school canon

Alan Gratz contributes 7 titles to the US-school assigned-reading corpus tracked by ReadingList. Alan Gratz's books are assigned across grades 3 through 9, with Lexile measures spanning 800L to 800L. Within this canon, Projekt 1065 and Ban This Book are Alan Gratz's most-cited titles across state ELA framework documents and AP/IB syllabus audits — they appear on multiple state Department of Education reading lists and in Common Core Appendix B exemplar references.

Alan Gratz's assigned-reading footprint clusters around recurring themes — courage, survival, empathy, working primarily in Historical Fiction and Adventure. State ELA frameworks tend to pair Alan Gratz with reading-skill anchors that reward students for tracking how character development, narrative voice, and historical setting interact — exactly the kind of multi-layered analysis that AP English Literature and IB Language A: Literature reward in their May exams. Below, each title links to its specific curriculum citations: which state cites it, at which grade, under which standards strand.

For parents and teachers researching Alan Gratz for the first time, the practical question is usually grade placement and theme fit. Use the Lexile range (800L to 800L) as a first filter: a Lexile measure 100-200L above a student's current reading level is the typical instructional sweet spot for guided classroom reading, while a measure at or below the student's level supports independent reading. Theme fit matters at least as much: Alan Gratz's books pair well with thematic-unit teaching in the cross-references above.