Scholastic has recently started the Teacher Book Wizard. It’s a data base of over 50,000 books that’s searchable by keyword, title or author. You can also type in the title of book and indicate if you are looking for similar books at the same, lower, or higher level.
I typed in the keyword “immigration” and was able to find quite a few that I know my students would consider “high-interest” ones. I certainly got a better selection that I did when I typed the same word at Amazon’s site. I think this might end up being quite useful to teachers of English Language Learners.
I will be placing the link on my Teacher’s Page.
This book wizard is also great for leveling books you have in your library. I type in the name of a book I don’t have the level for and get its lexile level and label it. Then when students are doing their free reading they have an idea of what will be right for them.