Saritz--there are still wonderful new book being written for children (not DOAWK or Captain Underpants). I use Goodreads pretty heavily now to look for books for DD. I know the old classics quite well, but am not familiar with books written after about 1985, so I need to catch up. Newbery award-winners are a pretty easy way to go, of course, but there are lists of Newbery contenders out there, too. A good children's librarian is a great asset. DD reads some schlock, but I obsessively strew her path with good-quality stuff, too.
I agree. There are some wonderful books being written for kids now as there are some atrocious ones written years ago (Try reading The Hardy Boys aloud without tripping over the excessive adverbs).
Colin Meloy's Wildwood series has some beautiful language and sentence structures which make the books a joy to read aloud.
One of the reasons so many of the classics are higher level is they employ complex syntax. Getting through a Dickens novel requires not only a strong stomach for misery but tenacity (I love Dickens and loved him as a kid, too. All those kids so much worse off than I.)
Many adult novels today are written in a lower lexile level. My non-fiction writing (book reviews) are written in a much higher Lexile Level (college level, or at the least, 11th grade) while my fiction most often is not. I've made a choice, though I certainly didn't have Lexile leveling in mind when I wrote, to sacrifice syntax complexity and bedazzlement for clarity.
We supplement ds's reading with classics and we make sure he understands the magic of Shakespeare, or Faulkner, or the political context of Animal Farm or of Kafka, or Chekov. We also don't worry too much about what he's reading as long as the joy is still there. He's starting to show discernment all on his own anyway.
