Once a child starts reading, finding books at the right level can pose a challenge. BOB Books and easy readers are a great place to start with a new reader. But after that? We find we need to balance the reading difficulty with appropriateness. Too tricky and the child gets frustrated, too simple and they lose interest. And then we have to consider the content. Will it be too much for my sensitive child? Promote questionable behaviors in my impressionable copycat?
I will be posting some of the readers and chapter books that have worked well for our family, especially series that help satisfy a voracious reader, but also some individual books. There are a few ways of measuring the difficulty of books, and you can look them up on Scholastic's Book Wizard. I prefer using the Guided Reading system, which ranks books from A to Z, as well as the easy readers that rank books up to Level 5.
BOB books are roughly levels B to G. These are great little books with lots of picture clues! They have short sentences based on building up familiarity with the sounds each letter makes. They help a child feel successful rather than overwhelmed--a BOB book was the first book my kid read on his own.
Modern and classic picture books, I Can Read!, Step Into Reading, and similar books bridge the gap from phonics series to simple chapter books. We have shelves and shelves of picture books that capture the kids' imagination. I was skeptical at first of the easy readers, but have found they are very popular and I am constantly having to re-shelve them because they are read so often! The simpler books (My First/Level 1) have very simple stories with short sentences. By Level 4, these books are divided into short chapters, but with friendly, larger text.
For simple chapter books, Flat Stanley (M), Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures (M), and The Magic Treehouse (M) were hits. Once we found characters we liked and got comfortable with the level of suspense, we stuck with a series for a while before moving on. We took turns reading as my reader tested out his comfort level.
The Boxcar Children series (O) is great for kids who are ready for longer, more complex stories. The author, Gertrude Chandler Warner, wrote the original books, and then even more were added so there are over 100! We were also delighted to discover that our library had some of the stories as audio books, and it kept my kids' attention and let me get some work done! We are working on story telling, so I asked my son to pick a book to "review." Here is his pick and what he had to say about it.
The Boxcar Children Mysteries #2: Surprise Island
Because their grandfather owns an island, the boxcar children get to sleep in a barn, and they have their own rooms. And it starts raining, and they have pans so they can catch the rain water so that way the barn doesn't get flooded. They pick from a garden which is behind the barn, and they have what they picked for one of their meals. They go on a boat. They found a very, very high shell pile. They found a tiny cave, an arrowhead, and an axe head (I think so). Then they almost get caught in the tide. Their dog, Watch, saved them. Violet got a violin. Near the end of the story, it's Benny's birthday. I think he turns 7.
Next up? Our favorite nonfiction books, The Cat in the Hat Learning Library!
