Is Diary of a Wimpy Kid considered a 5th grade book?
The Wimpy Kid series have accelerated reader ratings ranging from 5.2 to 5.8 and lexile measures of 950 to 1060. This does make them 5th grade books.
Not wanting to wander too far OT here, but since I was the poster who questioned DWK as a 5th grade reading level because most of the kids my kids went to school with read it much earlier, I just thought it might be worth noting my kids were attending a school which let kids choose whatever books they wanted to read and never tested or compared or drew lists from lexile levels past the point kids were reading anything on the level of very very early chapter books... so basically we had a "free-range" library and classrooms. I'm sure the students read DWK before choosing Warriors simply because of the cover, humor, and large font.
Re early reading and rare, I still think it would be helpful to know what the principal's interpretation of "rare" is - is it one or two kids per grade or 1 kid in 10 years. As others have posted above, general reading levels can vary a lot depending on the area you live in or school district emphasis/philosophy etc re pushing early reading... and there is a huge variability among when children learn to read, as well as a lot of "leaps and bounds" type progress among early readers of all abilities. It's jmo, but where we're at, I don't think finding a first grader who is reading DWK would be "rare" - it would be advanced relative to most of the kids in their first grade class, but I'm guessing that there would be at least 2-3 kids in each class my kids have been in who could read it. There were also at least 2-3 kids in their K-1 classes who seemed to be on the low end of the learning-to-read curve who were sensational way-ahead-of-grade-level readers by the time they hit 3rd grade.
polarbear
