Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Advanced reader but won't move on

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?