Matt de la Peña — assigned in US schools

Matt de la Peña in the US-school canon

Matt de la Peña contributes 2 titles to the US-school assigned-reading corpus tracked by ReadingList. Matt de la Peña's books are assigned across grades K through 12, with Lexile measures spanning 610L to 610L. Within this canon, Last Stop on Market Street and The Living are Matt de la Peña'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.

Matt de la Peña's assigned-reading footprint clusters around recurring themes — gratitude, working primarily in Picture Book. State ELA frameworks tend to pair Matt de la Peña 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 Matt de la Peña for the first time, the practical question is usually grade placement and theme fit. Use the Lexile range (610L to 610L) 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: Matt de la Peña's books pair well with thematic-unit teaching in the cross-references above.