Mentor Texts: Literary Devices and Reading Strategies
This page presents research-based mentor text recommendations designed to support elementary instruction in literary devices and reading comprehension strategies. Specifically, these mentor texts can be used for explicit strategy instruction, interactive read-alouds, guided reading, and independent practice, thereby helping students strengthen both comprehension and literary analysis skills.
These recommendations are grounded in classroom practice and aligned with widely accepted reading comprehension frameworks, ensuring their relevance and effectiveness for diverse instructional settings.
Table of Contents
Literary Devices
Reading Strategies
- Monitor & Clarify
- Making Connections
- Inferring
- Questioning
- Summarizing
- Visualizing
- Retelling / Determining Importance
- Synthesizing
Each section explains what the strategy entails, illustrates how it is typically taught, and highlights key features to look for when selecting mentor texts. Additionally, each section provides recommended titles to support instruction.
All book titles are listed for educational purposes only, and no copyrighted text is reproduced.
Why Use Literary Devices Mentor Texts?
Teachers use mentor texts that highlight literary devices to help students recognize, analyze, and apply elements like similes, metaphors, imagery, and symbolism in their own reading and writing. By studying how skilled authors use these techniques, students develop deeper comprehension, critical thinking, and expressive writing skills. These texts also provide engaging, concrete examples that make abstract literary concepts accessible, making lessons more interactive and meaningful.
Reading Strategies
Monitoring & Clarifying
Monitoring and clarifying help readers recognize when comprehension breaks down and take purposeful steps to restore understanding. For example, strategies such as rereading, slowing down, asking questions, and using context clues can support meaning-making throughout a text.
Instructional Focus:
Effective readers actively notice when something doesn’t make sense and apply “fix-up” strategies. Therefore, teachers can explicitly model this process during read-alouds by thinking aloud when encountering unfamiliar vocabulary, confusing events, or complex sentence structures. By hearing how proficient readers pause, reread, and problem-solve, students internalize these strategies and gradually apply them independently.
Furthermore, texts that naturally prompt confusion—through layered meanings, perspective shifts, or rich academic language—provide authentic opportunities for students to practice monitoring and clarifying. These texts are particularly effective during guided reading and shared reading, where teachers can scaffold thinking and gradually release responsibility.
Mentor texts for this strategy often feature:
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Challenging vocabulary
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Complex ideas
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Shifts in time, perspective, or meaning
Making Connections
Making connections helps readers construct meaning by linking new information to prior knowledge, personal experiences, other texts, or the broader world.
Instructional Focus:
Teachers can model how meaningful connections enhance comprehension rather than distract from the text. Specifically, explicit instruction helps students distinguish between connections that deepen understanding and personal tangents that may interrupt focus. Tools such as anchor charts, sentence stems, and think-alouds guide students as they practice text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections.
Additionally, mentor texts with relatable characters, universal themes, or real-world issues allow students to connect authentically while staying grounded in the author’s message. These texts work well in whole-group discussions, literature circles, and readers’ notebooks.
Types of Connections:
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Text-to-Self
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Text-to-Text
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Text-to-World
Recommended Mentor Texts:
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A Day’s Work – Eve Bunting (Level K)
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Advice to a Frog – Alice Schertle (Level O)
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Baseball Saved Us – Ken Mochizuki (Level O)
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The Basket Moon – Mary Lyn Ray (Level O)
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The Cello of Mr. O – Jane Cutler (Level M)
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Come On, Rain – Karen Hesse (Level P)
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Dad, Jackie, and Me – Myron Uhlberg (Level R)
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My Ol’ Man – Patricia Polacco (Level N)
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Every Living Thing – Cynthia Rylant (Level R)
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Granddaddy’s Gift – Margaree King Mitchell (Level O)
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The Hello, Goodbye Window – Norton Juster (Level K)
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Lightning – Seymour Simon (Level P)
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The Relatives Came – Cynthia Rylant (Level K)
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Under the Quilt of Night – Hopkinson & Ransome (Level N)
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The Wall – Eve Bunting (Level N)
Download the full editable mentor text lists by visiting Mentor Texts: Literary Devices and Reading Strategies here.
Inferring
Inferring requires readers to combine clues from the text with their background knowledge in order to read between the lines and develop a deeper understanding. In other words, inference allows students to uncover meaning that the author doesn’t state explicitly.
Instructional Focus:
Teachers can support inference-making by modeling how to notice textual clues—such as dialogue, character actions, and illustrations—and connect them to prior knowledge. Additionally, tools like graphic organizers and inference charts help students articulate their thinking while grounding their conclusions in evidence-based reasoning.
Moreover, books that leave information implicit encourage students to infer character traits, emotions, motivations, and underlying themes. Consequently, these texts are ideal for small-group discussions and written response activities where students justify their interpretations with evidence from the text.
Recommended Mentor Texts:
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A Day’s Work – Eve Bunting (Level K)
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A Picnic in October – Eve Bunting (Level P)
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Crickwing – Janell Cannon (Level P)
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The Dot – Peter Reynolds (Level K)
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Dreaming of America – Eve Bunting (Level N)
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The Gardener – Sarah Stewart (Level L)
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Kamishibai Man – Allen Say (Level N)
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The Lily Cupboard – Shulamith Oppenheim (Level N)
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Minty – Alan Schroeder (Level P)
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Mirette on the High Wire – Emily Arnold McCully (Level P)
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Mr. Lincoln’s Way – Patricia Polacco (Level M)
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Mr. Peabody’s Apples – Madonna (Level N)
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The Royal Bee – Frances & Ginger Park (Level M)
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Tight Times – Barbara Hazen (Level K)
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The Wretched Stone – Chris Van Allsburg (Level L)
Download the full editable mentor text lists by visiting Mentor Texts: Literary Devices and Reading Strategies here.
Questioning
Questioning encourages curiosity and engagement before, during, and after reading. By prompting students to ask questions, teachers can guide them to explore texts more deeply and think critically about the author’s purpose, ideas, and meaning.
Instructional Focus:
Teachers support this strategy by modeling how questions evolve throughout a text. For example, some questions can be answered directly, while others require inference, reflection, or group discussion. In this way, students learn that questioning is an ongoing process that strengthens comprehension and analytical thinking.
Additionally, mentor texts that provoke curiosity, emotional response, or uncertainty offer rich opportunities for students to generate meaningful questions. As a result, these texts encourage discussion and help students actively construct understanding from the text.
Recommended Mentor Texts:
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Because of Winn-Dixie – Kate DiCamillo (Level R)
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Granddaddy’s Gift – Margaree King Mitchell (Level O)
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How Many Days to America? – Eve Bunting (Level S)
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I Can Hear the Sun – Patricia Polacco (Level P)
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Knots on a Counting Rope – Martin & Archambault (Level M)
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The Lotus Seed – Sherry Garland (Level N)
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Mr. Peabody’s Apples – Madonna (Level N)
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Pink and Say – Patricia Polacco (Level S)
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The Royal Bee – Frances & Ginger Park (Level M)
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Shiloh – Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Level R)
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Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt – Deborah Hopkinson (Level S)
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Tight Times – Barbara Hazen (Level K)
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The Wretched Stone – Chris Van Allsburg (Level L)
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Charlie Anderson – Barbara Abercrombie (Level K)
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Amelia’s Road – Linda Altman (Level M)
Download the full editable mentor text lists by visiting Mentor Texts: Literary Devices and Reading Strategies here.
Summarizing
Summarizing focuses on identifying the most important ideas in a text, rather than recalling every detail. By learning to distill information, students strengthen comprehension and develop the ability to retell content concisely and accurately.
Instructional Focus:
Teachers support summarizing by modeling how to distinguish main ideas from supporting details. Through shared writing, guided practice, and think-alouds, students gradually internalize how to identify key concepts and organize information logically. As a result, summarizing becomes a transferable skill across both narrative and informational texts.
Additionally, texts with clear structure, strong central ideas, or well-defined events provide authentic opportunities for students to practice summarizing. These mentor texts work especially well during content-area reading, literature discussions, and guided reading lessons.
Recommended Mentor Texts:
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Always Remember Me – Marisabina Russo (Level S)
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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – Judi Barrett (Level M)
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Diary of a Worm – Doreen Cronin (Level K)
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Jumanji – Chris Van Allsburg (Level M)
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The Librarian of Basra – Jeanette Winter (Level L)
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The Man Who Walked Between the Towers – Mordicai Gerstein (Level L)
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My Name Is Georgia – Jeanette Winter (Level L)
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Rare Treasure – Don Brown (Level N)
Visualizing
Visualizing strengthens comprehension by helping students engage their senses and create vivid mental images while reading. By forming pictures in their minds, readers can better understand characters, settings, and events.
Instructional Focus:
Teachers model the visualization process by describing mental images that emerge from sensory language in the text. Meanwhile, students can practice visualization through sketching, labeling, or writing descriptions that reflect their mental imagery. This approach encourages active reading and deepens understanding.
Furthermore, texts that are rich in imagery, figurative language, and descriptive detail provide ideal opportunities for students to practice visualization. Such mentor texts are particularly effective during guided reading, read-alouds, and independent reading activities.
Recommended Mentor Texts:
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The Basket Moon – Mary Lyn Ray (Level O)
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Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White (Level P)
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A Chair for My Mother – Vera B. Williams (Level M)
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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – Judi Barrett (Level M)
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Eleanor – Barbara Cooney (Level S)
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Hello Ocean – Pam Muñoz Ryan (Level N)
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Lightning – Seymour Simon (Level P)
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Old Black Fly – Jim Aylesworth (Level J)
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Owl Moon – Jane Yolen (Level O)
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Song and Dance Man – Karen Ackerman (Level O)
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A Symphony of Whales – Steve Schuch (Level O)
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Tuck Everlasting – Natalie Babbitt (Level V)
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Under the Quilt of Night – Hopkinson & Ransome (Level N)
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Who Came Down That Road? – George Ella Lyon (Level N)
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I’m In Charge of Celebrations – Byrd Baylor (Level N)
Download the full editable mentor text lists by visiting Mentor Texts: Literary Devices and Reading Strategies here.
Retelling & Determining Importance
Good readers determine which information is essential to the overall meaning of a text. By focusing on key ideas and events, they can better understand the author’s purpose and retain critical information.
Instructional Focus:
Teachers support this strategy by modeling how to identify key events, main ideas, and relevant details while reading. In addition, graphic organizers and retelling frameworks provide students with tools to logically organize and prioritize information. Through guided practice, students learn to distinguish between essential content and minor details.
Furthermore, texts with strong narrative or informational structure naturally support effective retelling and comprehension monitoring. Using such mentor texts allows students to practice recognizing significance in both stories and informational passages.
Recommended Mentor Texts:
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Through My Eyes – Ruby Bridges (Level W)
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Animal Dazzlers – Sneed Collard (Level U)
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Mr. Lincoln’s Way – Patricia Polacco (Level M)
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The Graves Family – Patricia Polacco (Level P)
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Chicken Sunday – Patricia Polacco (Level N)
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Mrs. Katz and Tush – Patricia Polacco (Level P)
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Teammates – Peter Golenbock (Level N)
Synthesizing
Synthesizing occurs when readers combine ideas from the text with their prior knowledge and continuously revise their understanding as they read. This strategy helps students build a deeper, more integrated comprehension of both narrative and informational texts.
Instructional Focus:
Teachers model synthesizing by demonstrating how understanding evolves over time while reading. Additionally, sentence stems, reflection prompts, and think-alouds guide students in articulating how new information shapes or changes their thinking. Through guided practice, students learn to weave together multiple ideas and adjust their interpretations accordingly.
Moreover, mentor texts with layered themes, complex ideas, or evolving plots provide authentic opportunities for synthesis. These texts encourage discussion, journaling, and written response activities that help students refine their thinking and connect ideas across the text.
Recommended Mentor Texts:
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The Alphabet Tree – Leo Lionni (Level K)
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An Angel for Solomon Singer – Cynthia Rylant (Level P)
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Crickwing – Janell Cannon (Level P)
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Diary of a Worm – Doreen Cronin (Level K)
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Gleam and Glow – Eve Bunting (Level S)
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Goin’ Someplace Special – Patricia McKissack (Level M)
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Granddaddy’s Gift – Margaree King Mitchell (Level O)
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The Man Who Kept His Heart in a Bucket – Sonia Levitin (Level S)
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The Other Side – Jacqueline Woodson (Level M)
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Rare Treasure – Don Brown (Level N)
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Rules – Cynthia Lord (Level R)
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Smoky Nights – Eve Bunting (Level P)
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Tuck Everlasting – Natalie Babbitt (Level V)
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Charlie Anderson – Barbara Abercrombie (Level K)
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The Table Where Rich People Sit – Byrd Baylor (Level O)
Download the full editable mentor text lists by visiting Mentor Texts: Literary Devices and Reading Strategies here.
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This page was last updated on January 8, 2026.
