I tend to think that Lexile and AR ratings of books can be useful for approximating a level of difficulty for a book, but I'm dubious about them overall. Both systems rate Frank Herbert's Dune at a 5th grade level. I have, literally, no idea how they came up with this rating in such a complex work --- especially because it contains such a huge vocabulary of made-up words and so many "big" words.
These systems can be useful for generating a list of suggestions for reading, but I honestly don't see them as being terribly useful otherwise (I have sympathy for kids who have to read books inside their AR or Lexile levels). IMHO, some things don't lend themselves to being quantitated, and tastes in reading are among them. We adults sure can get some funny ideas about what's "good" for kids sometimes.
Val
