This happened with my DD too from about age 7 - 8. Is changing now at 8.5. After being quite mystified about it all (her vocab and comp. are very advanced), she finally explained it to me by saying "those books don't look like they're meant for me". She wanted books that looked age appropriate (including the front cover), with reasonable font size, and plenty of white space on the page and PICTURES but they needed to be interesting. If I could find such a thing she would gulp it up with great pleasure even when the language was way past her age level.

Do you have access to a friendly children's bookshop or know of someone in a bookstore with a real interest in children's literature? Explain what you're after. The particular edition of the book is important as you can sometimes get the same book in an edition with closely packed font with no pcitures, or in a wide-spaced format with line illustrations.

We had success with
*Cartoons and graphic novels (Calvin & Hobbes were a life saver for a while and she still loves them),
* the Araminta Spook books by Angie Sage (which were in the perfect format)
* Nim at Sea, by Wendy Orr (it was a particlar edition but can't check as the school have borrowed it).
* DK non-fiction
* the Warrior series (she is cat obsessed and read them happily despite them not having pictures etc.)
* Roald Dahl! (also a life saver)
* the How to Tame a Dragon series (at 8 though)
* The firework maker's daugher by Philip Pullman (this was probably the first independant chapter book that she gobbled up with great excitement)
* Geronimo Stilton books (at 6.5 - 7)
* Captain Underpants (!!! Not my choice!)

My DD is not VS at all - in fact it's a relative weakness for her. I wonder if this is a developmental thing that some G&T kids go through where their reading skills are very sophisticated but their visual/aesthetic taste is age normal. Just speculating.

Also, keep reading aloud to her. DD would sometimes start reading independantly what we'd begun reading alound to her -despite it not meeting her criteria.

Best wishes