The most-assigned books in U.S. schools, ranked

A Figures Bureau study · Dataset snapshot: 2026-10-24 · Statistics computed 2026-10-31 · every number recomputed at build time

This is a ranked count of actual reading-list assignments — not a survey, not a vote. Each row below aggregates source-verified assignments from U.S. state reading lists, award programs and published curricula (20,804 assignment records covering 2,809 distinct books). The table refreshes with every dataset snapshot.

Top 50 most-assigned books

Find it links go to the book on Amazon and are affiliate links — as an Amazon Associate, Book Statistics earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. They never affect the ranking: the order of this table is assignment count, computed from the source data, and each link searches Amazon for that exact title and author rather than pointing at a single edition.

Share = share of all 20,804 assignments in the corpus. States counts state-linked lists only; assignments attached to national curricula (e.g. CCSS exemplar lists) count toward the total but not the state column.

The most-assigned book by school level

• Elementary (grades 3–5): Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (100 assignments in the band)
• Middle school (grades 6–8): The Giver by Lois Lowry (68 assignments in the band)
• High school (grades 9–12): The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (42 assignments in the band)

Questions this table answers

What is the most assigned book in U.S. schools?

Wonder by R.J. Palacio — 163 of 20,804 reading-list assignments (0.8%), on lists in 32 states, typically grades 3-5. #2 is Shiloh (Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, 115) and #3 is New Kid (Jerry Craft, 114).

What is the most assigned book in American high schools?

In this corpus, the most-assigned book among grade 9–12 assignments is The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (42 assignments in the band). Note that most rows in the corpus come from state recommended-reading lists and curricula, which skew toward elementary and middle grades — see the methodology for what is and isn't covered.

Where does To Kill a Mockingbird rank?

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee ranks #370 with 11 assignments (0.1% of the corpus) across 3 states, typically grades 9-12. Surveys of what teachers teach in class (e.g. NCTE's) put the classics higher — state reading lists, which this corpus measures, lean newer.

Why do these rankings differ from "most taught books" surveys?

Teacher surveys measure what gets taught in classrooms, usually in high school English; this table counts appearances on published state reading lists, award programs and curricula across all grades. Both are real — they measure different things. We compute ours from 20,804 assignment records with per-row source provenance rather than survey recall.

What the corpus does and doesn't cover: methodology.

Download the data

• most-assigned-books.csv Top 100 ranked books — rank, title, author, year, pages, assignments, share, states, band. Free, CORS-enabled, CC BY 4.0 — reuse with a link.
• assigned-books.csv The full (book × state × grade) assignment join behind this ranking.
• All data downloads →

Cite this page

Method note

Rank = count of assignment rows per book across the whole corpus (snapshot 2026-10-24). An "assignment" is one appearance of a book on one source-verified list (state reading list, award program, curriculum or district list) for one grade. Every row carries its source URL and verification date. Full detail: methodology. The narrative version of this ranking, with commentary, lives at readinglist.school's Most-Assigned Books study.

Related reference pages

• Assigned books statistics The full corpus in reference form.
• Assigned book age statistics How old the books schools assign really are.
• Book length statistics Median pages by grade — and the 3rd-grade cliff.

Data + analysis: bookstatistics.com, CC BY 4.0. A Figures Bureau study.