I'm looking for suggestions to help my 6 year old. We are stuck in an in between place in terms of his reading. He has the ability to read beyond the 3rd grade level but puts rules and limits on the books he will read. He won't read anything that he cannot finish in one sitting because he is worried he will either lose his page or forget what he has read before. This rules out most chapter books. He has lost interest in the subject matter of the majority of the shorter books in the kids section with the exception of graphic novels. He likes these but we have exhausted the collection at the library since he goes through them so fast. Any other parents working through this that have tips. I'm really struggling to find anything that meets his needs. I would really love for him to make the jump to longer books so I don't have to be checking out 30+ books at a time, most of which go unread. Thanks.

I let my DD pick out a book mark at Barnes and Noble when she started into longer chapter books. Since she picked it out she seems more inclined to use it. That would at least solve the place issue. Or, maybe he could use a piece of paper to hold his place. He could jot down a few notes on it to review prior to starting up the next time.

Would practice help. Ie. Start a book he can read in an hour but stop half way through for a special snack and go back after 10 minutes. Then extend the time. I can be a hard skill and their are times I go back to a book and can't remember anything until I have read a few pages.

You could try a book such as Winnie the Pooh that has self-contained stories within. Other ones are collected tales of Curious George and Thomas the Tank Engine.

Also Milly Molly Mandy and Teddy Robinson.

My daughter was like that. She loved complicated plots, which weren't found in picture books, but chapter books made her nervous. I think they felt like too much of a commitment (even though we read chapter books to her at night). Finally, I got a chapter book on her Kindle and bribed her to finish it. It worked; she got over her fear and then started choosing more appropriate reading. The other thing about reading on Kindle that helped is we can enlarge the font, which makes reading easier for younger kids.

I found for my DD6 letting her take the lead in when she wanted to read the longer/advanced books worked best. I think she could sense that I wanted her to move on from fairy/princess books and so resisted quite a bit (she is very self directed and independent). she also preferred advanced books with complex stories but wanted us to read it to her.
Roald Dahl books were the turning point - she loved them so much she picked up where we left off and has been reading longer books since (secret garden, the Penderwicks etc). She reads all the time but will alternate from book to book unless she finds one irresistible. It also helps that her older brother is an advanced reader and she wants to read (actually do better than) what he is reading.
Currently she is obsessed with captain underpants unfortunately!!

DS would not touch chapter books at 4 years old because he was scared of too many words in one page and the black and white format. But, he had moved on from picture books. So, I got him the kindle app on iPad and downloaded the book series that he was crazy about and was asking me to read to him - I also taught him to zoom in on the words so that the font size increased and the number of lines per page were so few to not be intimidating. This worked like a charm - he read a book per day on his iPad kindle app. I switched him to paper print books from the same series after some weeks and he was able to handle it. I think that this approach is worth a try. Good luck.

I was going to say...during my read aloud time at night with my younger son when he was in K, I would get a (fake) tickle in my throat right at a good spot and ask that he read for a minute or two to me...and then go back to reading. When we read at night he was snuggled right up against me reading along with me.

Other times I would (not tricking him) be so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open and he would suggest to me that he read to me...and then once I was snoring he ended up with the book in his bed (we read at night in mine) and would finish it. I would have him tell me the part that I missed (figured summarizing was a good skill). Later, would read the end before I returned it to our shelf or the library.

My son is very picky about what he'll read—some graphic novels have high lexile scores, and he loves those.

Sorry didn't mean to push submit! Also he loves Calvin & Hobbes (our 5 year old is reading them now too). This year (3rd grade) he tore through books on Ben Franklin. No idea where that came from but always nice to see a passion light up your kids!

And sorry just saw he finished all the graphic novels .

One thing I did was I started reading chapter books 2-3 years above his reading level to his as bedtime reading starting at 4 or 5. One chapter a time at night.

Keep in mind that most early chapter books are often very boring books, and very easy lexile level. They are very deliberately written to be easy to read, rather than for their literary quality. They might be too easy for him. You might need to jump to books labeled for 8-12 years olds.

Another good suggestion others mentioned are longer books where each chapter is it's own story. My son loved the Encyclopedia Brown books.

My sons are now 7,but I could have written your post when they were 6. Honestly, my kids were just more interested in non-fiction at that point, and they still liked pictures and large text.

At age 6, one of them was a very proficient reader of high level non-fiction, but wouldn't read fiction at all at home until we started reading Captain Underpants to him. He started reading it after we would stop for the night, and then he read through the whole series. Next he read the Big Nate series. Some of those are purely comics strips, some are text and graphics. He just moved on to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, at age 7. It appears that he is also finally branching out slightly to other fiction books.

My other son almost totally skipped the short chapter books (he read 3 at the end of the school year) and went right to Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

None of this is great literature, I know. But it is great to see them so excited about reading a fiction book. Both love to read non-fiction, but it is important that they also read fiction as that is what the school reading tests use.

The Tashi books and the Toys Go Out series are both good transition series. They have bigger print and wider spacing, and the Tashi ones have cartoony pictures on many pages.

We also like the magazines from Cricket-- Muse is a must-read around here, Cobblestone is also quite good. They usually have narrower columns of text, which help.

I wouldn't push this. Some kids really aren't developmentally ready for smaller print/denser text at this age-- some are.

We never had this problem. I suspect it's because I was already reading DD chapter books at bedtime when she was 5. So I guess that's my recommendation.

Your child may be able to read at a 3rd grade level or higher, but may not be mature enough for the content or have the proper skills in place to actually understand the content of what he is reading. Perhaps it is not the length of the book that is bothering him, but that the book is not a good fit for him. My daughter's school used the CAFE Strategies for reading. They nicknamed it the 4 finger rule. Ask yourself the following 4 questions when reading. For each yes, you hold up a finger. If you have more then one finger down, the book is not a good fit for you and you need to pick a book at a more suitable level.

1. Comprehension: Do I understand what I am reading?
2. Accuracy: Can I read the words?
3. Fluency: Can I read accurately, with expression, and understand what I read?
4. Vocabulary: Do I understand the meaning of the words I am reading?

The skill of reading is just a visual ability to sound out grouped letters in an accurate manner. Along with reading comes comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. For example, my daughter needs to improve on her vocabulary database, even though she is 10 and can read at a 12th grade level (accuracy) if she doesn't know what the words mean and cannot figure them out contextually (vocabulary, comprehension) then she needs to read books geared for a lower age range (currently she has the most success and enjoyment reading at a 7th or 8th grade level).

The goal shouldn't be to have your child reading at the hardest level possible, but at the most enjoyable level possible. If they excel at reading when they are little, it should continue forward as long as they continue to read, comprehend, and enjoy.

http://www.thedailycafe.com/public/1330.cfm

My DS had trouble at that age with the font size and lack of pictures in higher level chapter books. He was uncomfortable with smaller font, and it wasn't a vision thing. It was age appropriate even though his skills and knowledge were not. And the picture thing, he both liked pictures and like the way it broke up the page. Plus, the concepts and humor get more complicated. I was shocked that my DS liked the captain underpants books, but he liked them because even with his big reading skills, he found them funny. I ended up banning them and he didn't disagree because the story really couldn't hold him. If the monotony of plain chapter books is an issue - try the Kate klise regarding books - fabulously funny stories and really interesting to look at.

When DS was really little and reading way ahead I was in a library and saw a sign that said just because they can read doesn't mean they don't like to look, so I have always tried to bring in a wide variety of types of books to read - no real downside to it. Sometimes I tell him he is "testing" the picture books for gifts for nieces and nephews.

DeHe

The obvious and simple answer to avoiding 30+ books would be to check out anthologies and non-fiction books. There is an additional cognitive skill involved in digesting full-length chapter books so perhaps try all those little pseudo-chapter books such as Magic Treehouse even if many are only 2nd or 3rd grade reading level-wise since they can be read in a single sitting.

Time Warp Trio, A to Z mysteries....also chapter books that can be read in one sitting.

I just thought of something. I often put a book down and think I can remember that I was on page 198 or just starting Chapter 33 and forget by the time I go back to it. I did start modeling for my younger son (when he was younger) who was always afraid of losing his page...how to skim the first page of each chapter (starting close to where I thought I was) until I ran across the chapter and then skimming that chapter to find the right page and then re-reading a page just to remember what was going on when I left off.

Also, sometimes my dh and I would take turns reading a chapter out of a book alternating nights. We started asking ds to "catch us up" because we missed the last chapter when it wasn't our turn. This helped him learn how to summarize a chapter but also so that he could see that putting a book down was okay, he learned that he did have the ability to recall what was read the night before. And if he couldn't remember the parent that night would read the first page and ask if it jogged his memory and usually it did.

I'm so happy to see this thread. DS4 has been going through a similar stage. Sometimes he's comfortable reading whole pages or even a chapter from a book (whatever we're reading together - Magic Tree House, Roald Dahl..), but he's much more comfortable reading the early readers with fewer larger print words and pictures on the pages (Cynthia Rylant's Poppleton, Mr Putter & Tabby..). He's even more likely to read pages from the Magic Tree House if it's a half page with a picture. I don't push him to read, and I feel lucky that he enjoys being read to. I've wondered about his confidence though, especially on the days when he's quick to say he "can't." I'm happy to see that this is a transition not especially unique to him, and that it takes time to develop the confidence to move on. I'm interested to checkout some of the series suggestions.

Hang in there. DD would refuse big-looking books, especially if they had small print. They just looked like "mommy books" apparently and she was convinced not for her. We started a book club of just us and I'd read to her. Then little brother would need quiet to go to sleep and inevitably she would want to keep reading, and end up reading the rest on her own, even the next night when she'd just want to read it herself because she could go faster and imagine it better, etc. This was also how I got her to try books with male protagonists and not just magical fantasy genre. She's much happier when she has something to read that she's engaged in ( I mean, family life is noticeably easier!) so I was just trying to expand her reads as we were running out of the same kinds of books from the library. But for a while I did do a lot of searching and requesting and skimming. I used the accelerated reader site to find likely books, and lists online, and there were more easy chapter books in her beloved genre than I'd imagined. Took a year or so to transition to reading any book. TG because there's a lot of junk out there so it's a great place to be, where you can just choose the good stuff! And she still does love graphic novels. Oh, and the promise of watching the film version after reading a book didn't hurt. We don't watch a lot of TV/movies so it's been a treat to watch Matilda, Harry Potter, etc (even Ella Enchanted, which was a godawful movie, but reading that book kicked off a lot more reading of any bigger book). Come to think of it, Dahl is a good gateway level of books. They're mostly short and easy, but very engaging and more involved than the pedestrian easy chapter series. Good luck! With time and exposure I'm sure he won't be able to resist the great books waiting for him

Magazines help with this.

Our DS loves How It Works; of which his uncle subscribed for him.

Also, if your child is interested in a movie, getting the book (if it was derived from such) is another way of priming the pump. Our son has recently discovered an old set of Narnia videos I had and so I purchased the set of books for him on ebay.

Our son enjoys those also, but wanted more technical material.

My DD11 was the same - she was an early reader and capable of reading way beyond what she actually did. I tried to encourage and support her, and pique her interest, but ultimately nothing really worked.

Then suddenly at age 8, when she started grade 4, she became book crazy. She'd read at least one novel per night, sometimes two, depending on the length. She entered a reading challenge club at school and was the first student to finish reading all the assigned books.

I guess my point is that nothing I really did seem to make any difference - she just discovered the joy of reading on her own.

I wonder sometimes if access to so many other activities can distract and divert them. When I was a kid all I did was read, draw or play the guitar. Now they have so many other options at their fingertips to engage them.

Along that line and maybe worth noting is that my DS10, when he has his electronics taken away, goes straight for a book.

Would a Kindle (or a Kindle app on ipad) help? Less intimidating perhaps when he doesn't know visually how the long the book is and he controls the font size?