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Sorry didn't mean to push submit! Also he loves Calvin & Hobbes (our 5 year old is reading them now too). This year (3rd grade) he tore through books on Ben Franklin. No idea where that came from but always nice to see a passion light up your kids!

And sorry just saw he finished all the graphic novels .

One thing I did was I started reading chapter books 2-3 years above his reading level to his as bedtime reading starting at 4 or 5. One chapter a time at night.

Keep in mind that most early chapter books are often very boring books, and very easy lexile level. They are very deliberately written to be easy to read, rather than for their literary quality. They might be too easy for him. You might need to jump to books labeled for 8-12 years olds.

Another good suggestion others mentioned are longer books where each chapter is it's own story. My son loved the Encyclopedia Brown books.

My sons are now 7,but I could have written your post when they were 6. Honestly, my kids were just more interested in non-fiction at that point, and they still liked pictures and large text.

At age 6, one of them was a very proficient reader of high level non-fiction, but wouldn't read fiction at all at home until we started reading Captain Underpants to him. He started reading it after we would stop for the night, and then he read through the whole series. Next he read the Big Nate series. Some of those are purely comics strips, some are text and graphics. He just moved on to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, at age 7. It appears that he is also finally branching out slightly to other fiction books.

My other son almost totally skipped the short chapter books (he read 3 at the end of the school year) and went right to Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

None of this is great literature, I know. But it is great to see them so excited about reading a fiction book. Both love to read non-fiction, but it is important that they also read fiction as that is what the school reading tests use.

The Tashi books and the Toys Go Out series are both good transition series. They have bigger print and wider spacing, and the Tashi ones have cartoony pictures on many pages.

We also like the magazines from Cricket-- Muse is a must-read around here, Cobblestone is also quite good. They usually have narrower columns of text, which help.

I wouldn't push this. Some kids really aren't developmentally ready for smaller print/denser text at this age-- some are.

We never had this problem. I suspect it's because I was already reading DD chapter books at bedtime when she was 5. So I guess that's my recommendation.

Your child may be able to read at a 3rd grade level or higher, but may not be mature enough for the content or have the proper skills in place to actually understand the content of what he is reading. Perhaps it is not the length of the book that is bothering him, but that the book is not a good fit for him. My daughter's school used the CAFE Strategies for reading. They nicknamed it the 4 finger rule. Ask yourself the following 4 questions when reading. For each yes, you hold up a finger. If you have more then one finger down, the book is not a good fit for you and you need to pick a book at a more suitable level.

1. Comprehension: Do I understand what I am reading?
2. Accuracy: Can I read the words?
3. Fluency: Can I read accurately, with expression, and understand what I read?
4. Vocabulary: Do I understand the meaning of the words I am reading?

The skill of reading is just a visual ability to sound out grouped letters in an accurate manner. Along with reading comes comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. For example, my daughter needs to improve on her vocabulary database, even though she is 10 and can read at a 12th grade level (accuracy) if she doesn't know what the words mean and cannot figure them out contextually (vocabulary, comprehension) then she needs to read books geared for a lower age range (currently she has the most success and enjoyment reading at a 7th or 8th grade level).

The goal shouldn't be to have your child reading at the hardest level possible, but at the most enjoyable level possible. If they excel at reading when they are little, it should continue forward as long as they continue to read, comprehend, and enjoy.

http://www.thedailycafe.com/public/1330.cfm

My DS had trouble at that age with the font size and lack of pictures in higher level chapter books. He was uncomfortable with smaller font, and it wasn't a vision thing. It was age appropriate even though his skills and knowledge were not. And the picture thing, he both liked pictures and like the way it broke up the page. Plus, the concepts and humor get more complicated. I was shocked that my DS liked the captain underpants books, but he liked them because even with his big reading skills, he found them funny. I ended up banning them and he didn't disagree because the story really couldn't hold him. If the monotony of plain chapter books is an issue - try the Kate klise regarding books - fabulously funny stories and really interesting to look at.

When DS was really little and reading way ahead I was in a library and saw a sign that said just because they can read doesn't mean they don't like to look, so I have always tried to bring in a wide variety of types of books to read - no real downside to it. Sometimes I tell him he is "testing" the picture books for gifts for nieces and nephews.

DeHe

The obvious and simple answer to avoiding 30+ books would be to check out anthologies and non-fiction books. There is an additional cognitive skill involved in digesting full-length chapter books so perhaps try all those little pseudo-chapter books such as Magic Treehouse even if many are only 2nd or 3rd grade reading level-wise since they can be read in a single sitting.

Time Warp Trio, A to Z mysteries....also chapter books that can be read in one sitting.

I just thought of something. I often put a book down and think I can remember that I was on page 198 or just starting Chapter 33 and forget by the time I go back to it. I did start modeling for my younger son (when he was younger) who was always afraid of losing his page...how to skim the first page of each chapter (starting close to where I thought I was) until I ran across the chapter and then skimming that chapter to find the right page and then re-reading a page just to remember what was going on when I left off.

Also, sometimes my dh and I would take turns reading a chapter out of a book alternating nights. We started asking ds to "catch us up" because we missed the last chapter when it wasn't our turn. This helped him learn how to summarize a chapter but also so that he could see that putting a book down was okay, he learned that he did have the ability to recall what was read the night before. And if he couldn't remember the parent that night would read the first page and ask if it jogged his memory and usually it did.

I'm so happy to see this thread. DS4 has been going through a similar stage. Sometimes he's comfortable reading whole pages or even a chapter from a book (whatever we're reading together - Magic Tree House, Roald Dahl..), but he's much more comfortable reading the early readers with fewer larger print words and pictures on the pages (Cynthia Rylant's Poppleton, Mr Putter & Tabby..). He's even more likely to read pages from the Magic Tree House if it's a half page with a picture. I don't push him to read, and I feel lucky that he enjoys being read to. I've wondered about his confidence though, especially on the days when he's quick to say he "can't." I'm happy to see that this is a transition not especially unique to him, and that it takes time to develop the confidence to move on. I'm interested to checkout some of the series suggestions.