Respectfully, psychland, I really disagree. That is, I agree with this:
When you have to work to decode text your comprehension of it is not great. It does not matter how bright you are you are still missing things.
Yes. When my kindergartener reads The Phoenix and the Carpet, he is missing things that his older sister does not miss.
But I completely disagree with this:
When you read a book for fun you should be able to decode all the words (with the possible exception of one of two, in the book NOT per page) and understand all of the nuances of the language used. If you can't do that you probably should not read it.
Very, very strongly disagree. I feel sad just thinking about that, actually. In the BOOK? So DD8 should have been able to decode every word in every Harry Potter book before I "allowed" her to read them? You are going to forbid your daughter to read them till she can decode every single word (but one or two) in the 700+ page tomes in the later books. How would you even know? Heck, there may be a few words in those books that *I* did not know.
