This literally made me cry. I'm not kidding. My DS7 just finished 1st and since our school uses the AR program I've been more aware of reading levels. He's tested at a reading level of 6.6 for the end of the year (which, obviously is a very superficial testing, so I'm not taking it to heart), but what seems to have happened since I was a kid is that the people writing fiction for young adults have dumbed down their style so much that many of the books that are entirely inappropriate for him, content-wise, are actually easier to read than such classics as Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows and Peter Pan(and I haven't actually checked this last one so I can't be sure, but I'm guessing...). He won't touch Winnie the Pooh with a ten foot pole, because it's not cool, but my word, the Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy kid are pathetic.
I'm rambling, I know, and probably not even making my point. My son grew by two full years on the AR standard last year, and it has nothing to do with anything he studied in school and everything with the books I helped him choose. At least reading is "easy" to after school, but he then misses the wonderful experience of discussing a psychologically or historically important book. I'll never forget the chills up my spine in 11th grade (regular) English when we discussed "The Turn of the Screw". I know I wouldn't have picked up on half of the creepiness without the help of discussing it with others. And can you tell me that learning to recognize an unreliable narrator is not an important life lesson??? Please. We learn about our humanity from Art and Literature. Hey- Maybe that's why they call them the Humanities.
