Hi,
My dd, 9 (almost 10) used to love to read. She began reading at two and was reading chapter books at 4. She loved reading...She read all The American Girls Books in first Grade and the Harry Potter Books in second...I would have to tell her to stop at night.

At the end of third grade she scored a 79 on her DRP and at the beginning of 4th, she scored an 81....That indicates that she can read and comprehend beyond a highschool level.

She has not enjoyed reading at ALL since finishing the Harry Potter Series and entering public school. She will. She will read and she will read the bare minimum requirement for school. She has a hard time finding books she likes even after many suggestions from friends.

She has landed on "The Cat Who" Series by Lillian Jackson Braun.....but she is reading them so slowly. Like one a month.

So, they told all the kids their DRP numbers and then traslated them to Lexile numbers during library. She was told she was a 1210 Lexile. Now, she is supposed to pick books that are withing 100 points of her Lixile.

I think that the teacher wouldn't even notice if she were 400 points below it, but she believes that she has to choose these high level books. I think that maybe, the pressure of having to read at such a high level and being told that she is so far above grade level has turned her off completely to reading. The whole thing with keeping logs of books she is reading and HAVING to read 20 minutes a day has totally taken the joy out of it.

I EVEN ignore the reading log...I sign it every week without checking what she read. I told her that I know she reads enough on her own and enjoys it enought that I'm not going to make her do the log and to just put the book she is reading on it with a 20 minutes next to it for every day and I would sign it...

BUT lately, I have to ASK her to read the book before I sign it BECUZ she can't write "The Cat Who" on her log for the rest of the year and she hasn't actually been reading it....Ugh..

So, how does a kid who reads sooooo high, decide they don't like reading....?

A little about her....she is a writer...perfect scores on state tests in writing...perfect prompts and good spelling...

This year she has been interested in Math and started Math Olympiads. Mayby she is just shifting her interests...but really, she hasn't been even ramotely interested in a book in a year and a half...or TWO! *except this book called "dreams" that teaches you how to interpret dreams..

Anyway, anyone else have a way above grade level reading kid who doesn't enjoy reading?

Thank you

I'm sure you'll get some great replies from others who know a lot more about such things. I just wanted to say that I think you've probably solved the mystery...the combination of shifting interests and simply not finding books she enjoyes right now in her "required" lexile. My DD(now 22) was a very strong reader (although not as strong as your daughter)and went through a similar "phase" in upper elementary school. I was alarmed when she announced to me one day "I just really don't get the point of reading. I would never do it for enjoyment." What!?!? I couldn't believe it and immediately set out to change her outlook. It took a while...but by high school she once again decided she enjoyed reading. She graduated from college in May with a 4.0 in her major...English...and is currently in graduate school at the University of Oxford writing a dissertation on the writings of Jane Austen! Clearly, she worked through the issues and is an avid reader...both for pleasure and for school. Good luck...I know you can work through this with your daughter, too.

Totally opinion here. I would not bother with finding material to match the Lexile score - we never had success finding interesting/appropriate reading material for a strong reader at that age, and in our case it was a voracious rather than reluctant reader. And about the interest in reading, beyond making sure there is not a vision problem or other impairment interfering with reading, I would (try to) not stress out about it. The ability will still be there when she needs/wants it.

I would, however, try to work with your daughter to find a way to comply with the reading log requirement in a meaningful way. Does she have other interests she could pursue through reading? For example, if she is interested in math, she might enjoy the Murderous Maths series - math humor plus engaging, substantive content. Or maybe audiobooks instead of reading? That might be a strategy to get her hooked on a series so she wants to read more....

BadMom would totally lie on the reading log. I've got a voracious reader who goes through stages where she doesn't feel like reading. Or she feels like reading a particular *cough*PercyJackson*cough* book for the umpteenth time, picking out just her favorite parts. Or she feels like listening to a particular *cough*PercyJackson*cough* audiobook for the umpteenth time, picking out just her favorite parts.

I am not the Homework Police, and IMHO there's nothing that kills reading for pleasure like being forced to read it's not pleasurable. If the spirit of the reading requirement is to ensure basic literacy and establish a habit of reading for pleasure, and if my kid is literate and reads for pleasure when it's pleasurable, the spirit of the requirement's been met, and I consider the homework to be done.

BadMom has a bad attitude towards school. OTOH, I don't send in a sheet for the teacher to sign and send back weekly, saying that she actually explained fractions so the kids understand them, rather than teaching everything by rote. Or that she made sure my kid had ever heard her assigned spelling words spoken aloud, so when the other kid who gives them to her at test time totally mangles the pronunciation, my kid doesn't think, "oh, maybe I've been studying it wrong, and it's really pronounced that way, so I should spell it 'revelance,' not 'relevance.'" So they could be getting worse!

Talk to the teacher about that Lexile 100 point thing. She obviously can read well, see if they will just let her pick books that interest her due to the lack of interest. Also try non-fiction, whatever her passion is see if she will read books about that even if it's underwater basket weaving. Classics might be another option, like the real fairy tales or Shakespeare? It could just be that the way books are being written these days is boring to her. Have her do NaNoWriMo and write her own book...?

There's so much to be picked up from reading well written books, from vocab to writing style, that it's worth worrying about how to make it more enjoyable.

My personal love of reading I think has much to do with my mother's attitude, which was, "oh, you're reading, I won't bother you with X". Reading (any book) was seen as next to holy and too valuable to interupt with mundane things like room cleaning, bedtime, etc. Longterm, if you limit TV/computer type alternatives and make it somehow extra attractive to read, then reading might gradually come to represent more of an escape than it does now.

Shorter term with the difference between her interests/age and her reading level, it really is that tough to find fun and interesting books. Beyond spending lots of time at excellent libraries searching, not much to suggest. As she gets older she will add genres.

Polly

I don't know how helpful this is, but my husband is a brilliant, literate person who doesn't read very much. If he does, it's mostly reference books, like field guides. He does read the New Yorker and the New York Times, but I would estimate he reads maybe 2 fiction and 3 nonfiction books a year, and that's generous.

He read as a child, but not nearly as avidly as I did. He still scored extremely high on the verbal portions of his SAT and GRE, and he's a great writer. It just doesn't seem to be what excites him. He is musical, visual, and tactile in his hobbies.

FWIW, he reads rather slowly, at least by my estimation. He complains about it. I don't think there is any kind of LD involved, though.

My ds8 is a good reader - the last time he was tested above level was in 1st grade - she tested him up to 5th grade reading and comprehension (but didn't go any further). He drives me crazy with his not reading ! He reads alot at school - from what I hear, he reads every chance he gets. He'll even stay in and read at recess. He can read any level he likes, apparently. At home, it's a different story - the only book he'll read is the one they're currently reading in his 4th grade reading group - they have to read so much of it before they meet. Once that's read - nothing. Now - if I suggest that we read a book together, he's perfectly willing to do that - but just doesn't enjoy reading for pleasure by himself. I hope he grows out of it - I always loved to read as a child, and still do.

There are unlikely to be tons of books in a school library at the 1200 lexile level that are going to be really interesting to a pre-teen. I'd write and let the teacher know that your DD is not finding interesting or enjoyable books at her required level, and ask the teacher for a list of suggested books and let the light dawn spontaneously about perhaps needing to explicitly change that instruction.

Until then, I'd look for collections of short stories so that the 20 minutes of reading at her lexile level actually gets her somewhere. Andrew Lang's collections of fairy stories might appeal, and "The Blue Fairy Book", at least, is at the "right" lexile level.

My son is almost 9 and is a very good reader. His lexile range is 1250-1375. Last year when he was supposed to be reading in his range, it was nearly impossible to find anything that was interesting AND age appropriate. There were lots of choices that were one or the other, but not both.

He would also prefer to read graphic novels or light hearted funny books that are well, well below his appropriate reading level. We homeschool now, so I just let him. I figure that reading a little Wimpy Kid, Dragonbreath or Bone isn't going to destroy his abilities any more than me forcing him to read Mark Twain at 8 will!

If you need to find things, try the Scholastic Book Wizard and set it to lexile level. You can put in a book she liked and have it "find similar". http://www.scholastic.com/bookwizard/

Children need to read for the love of the story. Not because it's listed on the lexile chart in a certain range. It has been proven that "reassurance reading" that is reading something that is really simple is good for kids. So is reading the same book more than once.
My DS was told that he needed to read in his lexile range and he stopped reading all together. I had to sign his log every night so I did. Since he didn't want his mom to be a liar, he took over bedtime stories for his little brothers. Lexile scores, probably 100! But he enjoyed it and so did my littles.

As soon as he was accelerated out of elementary and away from the reading log, he went back to it. He's 9 now and reading Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku.

Turning a thing done for pleasure into a requirement is a great way to make the thing no longer pleasurable.

In your place, I would explain why the school has such a program... so students who are not interested in books will have a chance to become interested, and so students who are at or below grade level in language arts will have literature that helps them improve.

And then I'd say, since you're neither of those things, that's why you're not going to participate anymore.

Finally, I would ask the teacher if it was okay for us to waive the entire reading log idea for my DD. If not, I'd simply fake it all year, randomly changing titles whether DD had read them or not.

My DD has a 20-minute-a-night requirement, but does not have a log, so I don't have this issue. Her G/T class has been assigning reading projects, but at least she gets to choose her material, and she's been pretty happy with her choices so far.

I agree with Dude. We simply stopped doing the reading log, as it didn't make sense for us and was just a hassle. We occasionally mention the sorts of things DS has read recently, but we're not going to keep track of it. I doubt that the school in any district can condition a student's grades on the parent's performance of tracking activities anyway (i.e. parents can't be given homework).

There's certainly something to be said for not rocking the boat and being as pleasant as possible, but I think that the reading logs are a chance to remind the school/teacher that a child is far outside the norm, and a low-value way to get a teacher or admin to acknowledge that certain things are pointless for a child who's far ahead.

The only reason I'd do a reading log is to show the teacher how far ahead of the curve a student's reading really is, but in general I think that that's a weaker approach than relying on testing or other hard results, plus insistence on the ol' "evidence based practice". And DS brings a thick book to school often enough out of habit that his teacher has probably noticed. We haven't heard about the reading log in quite some time now.

I have two good readers -- one who loves to read and one who really does not. My oldest, fortunately, wasn't held to any reading stds once she got to about nine. The last time she took a lexile test, she was 10 and scored around a 1500. She did enjoy reading some books with high lexiles like that, but she also read all kinds of other stuff. The way her school encouraged reading to a high level was to assign some challenging books in the classroom like The Phantom of the Opera and other unabridged classics, but there were no reading logs.

My youngest, the one who does not like reading, also reads well above grade level, but probably not as high as her sister did at her age. For her, 2e does play into it. She reads very slowly and has other issues that impede her reading pleasure.

Your dd sounds somewhere btwn my two -- no LD (like my dd13), but little passion for reading at this point (like my dd11). Some of the stuff we've tried w/ dd11 might or might not work in your case in that your dd doesn't have a LD. The few things that have had some success with dd11 include:

* buying her a Nook and letting her read on that (she likes technology and can download samples of books and decide if she wants to continue reading them or not once she's had a chance to preview them)
* letting her read magazines and shorter things like collections of short stories (Edgar Allen Poe, for instance, is likely to be fairly high on a lexile range, but also has a lot of shorter stuff in case she loses interest quickly)
* like you, not following with an iron fist whether the reading log is a 100% accurate representation of what dd is reading -- putting it back in her court rather than making it a chore

Well, I HAVE asked the teacher for some suggested reading books and the teacher's response (twice) was "Well, she has just read SOOOO many books already!" I really don't know if she has ever even asked dd which books she has read...I know her BIG challenge book is Harry Potter. Only the really bright kids can make it through the first book of Harry Potter. She told me that many of her kids start the book and decide not to finish it. She knows DD has already read that...so ... I guess that leaves...no. books. So,I went to the vp with this and she said to lie on the book logs and that there were many many books at dd's level in the library. (Our 4th Grade is at the Middle School) She also asked the Librarian to keep a dialogue with dd about what she is reading. This just started. Maybe it will help.



LOL! I was kind of wondering if DD was making this up...that she couldn't find a book she liked at that level. Thank you for filling me in. I was never a good reader and don't read much fiction, (but I like non-fiction and forums!) It is hard to know if she is pulling one over on me!

When she is done with her current "Cat Who" book, I think I will suggest to her that it might be okay if she re-reads Harry Potter. She wanted to, but with all this Lexil stuff and required reading and not re-reading, I discouraged her. I think I will go ahead and let her. Maybe she will be willing to read it to DD6. She has tried to read it herself and just doesn't have enough phonics to sound out the harder words.

I will do all of these. It will take time to afford a Nook. I would be closer to buying one if DD6 hadn't read 40 BOOKS for a Read to Feed fund raiser at school...I said I would give her a buck a chapter book. She had two weeks to read. I would have NEVER imagined she could read 40 of those stupid Rainbow Magic Books in two weeks! I tested her on them too because I didn't believe her! No one has turned her off to reading yet! Obviously those books must be below her challenge level if she can read them so fast...right? I guess this is one case it is good to be under challenged. This is teaching me that being underchallenged is not always bad.

DD6 does not like to stumble on a word. It messes up the flow of the story. So, she only reads books she can read easily. I have learned through all this that is okay! However, I am $40 poorer.

Thank you for all your wonderful advice. She will be so happy to read Harry Potter again without being accused of being lazy or underachieve (I think I might even be to blame sometimes) and I will buy her a Nook for her 10th bday...her 6 year old sis will be sooooo jealous!

We got dds their Nook Simple Touchs for x-mas as their major gifts and when they were on sale for $79 each.

Re Harry Potter, heck, I've even read the series more than once. It is a great set of books!

My DS8 also is a crazy good reader, and has a requirement to read 30 minutes a day, but there is no restriction on what he reads. We do send books to school with him from our local library, since the school library, while prety well stocked, doesn't have exactly what he wants.

It takes us time to find things that DS will want to read, though we always feel lucky when we strike upon a series. Just my opinion, but I would ask the teacher if it's OK to ignore the lexile level business, since you all know your DD is an excellent reader, and just let her pick what she wants so she can get her love of reading back. I'm sure no teacher wants to be responsible for crushing a child's love of learning.

As for HP, that's great if your DD wants to read it again. DS read the first one, but wasn't overly excited about it and didn't want to read any of the others. I'm trying to think back to what I loved at that age... Did your DD read all the Anne of Green Gables books? How about the Chronicles of Prydain? If you get clearance for below lexile books, post again, and we can give a ton of suggestions.

...I think part of her NOT reading or being excited by reading is that...If she chooses a book, she is not allowed to switch books. Occasionally she is asked to write up a prediction or whatever on the book she is reading and logging. Her teacher noticed once that she was reading "Midwife's Apprentice" for too long (she kept losing it lol) and told her that she wanted it done in a couple of days. I have not spoken with her teacher extensively, but I can tell she is not going to understand my point of view. She is older and very rigid. She seems to be good with struggling readers, and might even resent my dd for being advanced. She encouraged me to tell her to play chess. That was her big words of advice at our last conferences. She said that chess is "good for her because you have to think ahead." While this is true, I thought we were way beyond that. She told me how wonderful it was to have someone in her class who could remind her how the rook moved. She tried to convince me that chess was "hard." This was her Language Arts teacher and this was all she could say at parent conferences and that DD was doing "fine" and that she has already read "so many books" and when I asked about her friendships she said, "well, I never see her by herself."

So, what I'm trying to say is that talking to this teacher is out.

Ideas for reading...I'll tell you what she has read and enjoyed

Shadow's On The Sea by Joan Hiatt Harlow. (I picked her up Joshua's Song by the same auther and she was happy.)

Behind the Bedroom Wall (don't know who)Read it last year.

American Girl's Book on Money (has been reading it and re-reading it since kindergarten and frequently makes business plans)

On Pointe Magazine

American Girl Magazine (writes to them, but never sends it.)

She wants to read that wearwolf moon seried...what is it called? (I won't let her)

She thinks she might enjoy Hunger Games...any thoughts?

She likes books on how to interpret dreams.

And books on how to decorate your room.

She has a book about how to tutor children to read on her nightstand.

She seems to be injoying the "Cat Who" Books and will sometimes refer to them...but she doen't love them so much that she brings them in the car

Oh! SHE LOVED Dance of Sisters

AND Dancing Shoes
AND Ballet Shoes (but these are sooo far under her Lexile!




Books she doesn't like...

Anything Tolken

Anything she can watch on TV...i.e. Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the prarie...

No HOBBIT! NO Chronicles Of Narnia (She heard me read most of them to her sister)

She really is a girl with a bit of an edge. She want to read about social problems about girls her age (or older) and most of those are written so badly or they are written for girls who are deciding when will be there first time ...ya know.

She really isn't into reading about the pioneers, although she has enjoyed historical fictions that have taken place during wartimes.

Oh, she like the Red Rock Series about a Christian Group of kids who got into some scary adventures...like being in a car accident in which the car ended up under water and they all had to save each other. I think they were about a 7th grade level. She actually devoured that series. A friend gave them to her.



I am going to officially blow off the Lexile restrictions and just let her read books she likes...IF they bring it up as an issue, I will then talk with the teacher and the principal about how she has obviously met their standards of fluency.

Any ideas for Books based on her interests would be very welcome! I may even lie a little to her about the books being at a good lexile...some books aren't even listed...so I could tell her that I couldn't find the Lexile...and that would be okay.

Your description of the teacher would certainly convince me to ignore some of her suggestions! You have given a great list for people to get an idea about what your kiddo enjoys. Shout out to parents of girls -- any ideas based on sydness's list?

I giggled a little at the requirement that she won't like anything she can see on TV. When I read Anne of Green Gables, there was no TV version of it. Yes, I am old. This is a little limiting though, in this day and age, when all the classics have been made into TV shows or movies, and all the "new classics" are quickly swept up into the world of TV and movies as well.

As for Hunger Games, maybe you will want to read it first. I have heard this is not for the more sensitive kids. Also, it will break your DD's no-film rule when the movie comes out.

My girls and I both liked the Hunger Games series for the first two books and found the third book very disappointing. The characters kind of went off in directions that didn't seem to be supported by their earlier behavior. It is violent, but not something that I worried about terribly in that it is the type of violence that isn't something my kids are likely to see in the real world.

I worried a lot more when dd13 read The Lovely Bones when she was something like 11 or so b/c the main character is raped and murdered and was about the same age as my dd. That seemed more real and, had I read it first and realized that, I probably would have tried to direct dd away from it.

My youngest is enjoying a book called Reswyt on her Nook right now, but I haven't read it so I really don't know much about it.

Another nice series is the Penderwick Sisters. They are newer books, but have an old-fashioned feel. I see a lot of great ones listed above. We've often gone with Newbury winners, and anything by E.L. Konigsburg, is great, too.

I absolutely "ditto" all comments about ignoring Lexiles. First of all, I can't even guess what our adult lexiles would be (1500+? 2000+? does it go up from there?), but most of the best-selling books are only around 700-950. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, for example, which I recently read, has a lexile of just over 900. Does that mean it can't be of interest to me, just because I'm capable of reading something supposedly more difficult? Of course not. Most NY Times best sellers (things like Jodi Picoult books, for example) are often only in the 700's. I encourage anyone who is at a school that absolutely requires the children to read in their lexile range, to point this out to the teacher. You can even ask them what they have been reading in their personal time, and show them the lexiles :-)

But I do agree that highly capable readers should intersperse some more challenging vocabulary/sentence structure into their reading, so the classics can be great for this! They contain age-appropriate content, but are more challenging than current books.

I do think my own daughter had a temporary phase of being turned off from reading, and it may be that she was reading overly-challenging, or boring-to-her books. Once she settled into some books that were more enticing to her, she got right back into it, with gusto!

Good luck.

The VP has good feedback, but... lots of books appropriate for your daughter? The lexile bookfinder has *3* books in your daughter's range (-100/+50) that are fiction and labeled non-conforming (appropriate to a younger audience). And 675 fiction books that might or might not be completely inappropriate (_Mists of Avalon_) or otherwise uninspiring for a child that age (boring/too long: _Mansfield Park_ is a great book, but...).

Tell your daughter she graduated out of lexile and now gets a full run of the library? And quietly collect some suggestions that go all the way from high to low?

Some short(er) stories in the "right" range:
Kipling's Jungle Book
Sherlock Holmes
Poe (might be a bit gory)

Does the Tolkien allergy extend to all SF&F? Do the girls issues have to be contemporary? If not early Robin McKinley has some fairy tale re-renditions and two YA books (The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, young girls coming of age through adventuring) that would be age appropriate. Steer well clear of Deerskin (rape/incest) and maybe also Sunshine (vampires, very gory).

What was that werewolf/moon series (so many of them, so few age appropriate...)?

I agree with all the other posters who ignore the lexile range and the reading logs. I understand why the schools use them, but don't find them helpful in our situation.

Have you considered magazines, such as Cricket? The reading isn't difficult but each issue has a variety of stories, poems, pictures, etc. about all sorts of topics. My DD9 (also a very advanced reader) loves to get the magazine each month. It might be a way to ease back into reading. There are actually several different magazines to choose from and they cover everything from literature to science to archeology. It's a good way to uncover topics that might be interesting and lead to other books on a certain subject, too.

http://www.cricketmag.com/ProductList.aspx?type=M

Not her lexile level, but a book she might enjoy - "Out of my Mind" by Sharon Draper. Just started reading it with ds8 and he's really enoyed the first few lines LOL I bought it on my Kindle, but we read the first few pages on my phone as we were walking home one day. Must get back to it when we get a chance !

My son (5) does this. He CAN read really well but I know he has NEVER EVER read at his level at school (possibly not at home where I can see either). I know this cause when I start a new bedtime story with him, he reads phrases over my shoulder, asking me to hurry up to the part where it says"......". When I suggest he reads the book he quickly states that it's too hard, there are no pictures etc.

It sounds as though you have a plan now, some other books you may want to look at: Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), Judy Blume books are all awesome, Sue Townsend books (Diary of Adrian Mole), ! When I was her age I also loved to read the pre-teen/teen girl trying to figure out her life kinda books.

I'd say let her read what she wants to read - as an adult I recall re-reading a lot of Enid Blyton books like Naughtiest girl in the school etc over and over. I just really enjoyed the stories I'd really say let her read what she wants - and then every now and then select 5 or 6 new books and let her choose 2 from those to add to her collection (these could be closer to her level if you wanted)

Thank you ALL for you wonderful suggestions and concern! It's amazing how much common sense is on this forum and not in real life. She came home from school yesterday very excited to finish up her Cat Book and wanted to start right away on The Hunger Games. So, she finished her book last night and asked to go to the library to get the Hunger Games. Would you know they are so popular that there were no coppies left in the library. The Librarian, who knows her Lexile and has been asked by the VP to guide DD's reading choices suggested a book. The Grimm Legacy. She is excited reading it, but I looked it up and it is a 600 Lexile! I know I know...I was just complaining that I don't WANT her to have to read at HER Lexile....but 600 is even BELOW her grade level! Anyway...I am happy she is going to enjoy this book and I have a feeling it will be read in a day and a half, so we better go find those Hunger Games and I'm going to write down some of your suggestions too! Thank you!

OMG! Look at all my spelling problems! You must be amazed that I have offspring who reads so well! lol!

She also asked me to find her the Alex Rider Books.
I looked them up at a Lexile 680 to 780....

Not great, but a little closer...So, those are the things she is interested in at the moment...I guess. The are Fantasy? No? Realistic Fantasy? Thriller?

I don't know..
The Cat Who Books were mysteries...so, I really don't know what she likes. I don't THINK she likes SiFi. She claimes to HATE talking animals, yet she LOVED Harry Potter.
Again...thank you for all your thoughts.

My DD9 just read one called "The Ruby Key" and couldn't put it down. Lexile 860. It has magic and other worlds a little like Harry Potter (although nothing is really like Harry Potter). It has a sequel called "The Silver Door."

How are they handling reading at school? I mentioned on another post that my DD hates her school reading group because they stop too often to overanalyze every little thing. It definitely takes the fun out of reading.

Sorry to jump in, but I think you might want to read some reviews about The Hunger Games, and how age appropriate it is. The words won't be too difficult for her, but most people seem to think the content is not appropriate for 9 year olds. Even if certain incredibly mature 9 year olds can marginally handle the gory, gruesome violence and torture scenes that are explicitly detailed in the book, I would still say that it will be a BETTER book for a 12+ year old, so why not save it? There are plenty of books that are less questionable for that age. Just my opinion, but I wouldn't recommend this. I'm not in such a hurry for them to grow up before their time :-(

More suggestions: The Phantom Tollbooth has a Lexile over 1000. Also look into: Mysterious Benedict Society; When You Reach Me (Newbery 2010); Bridge to Terabithia; Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo; A Wrinkle in Time; Matilda by Roald Dahl; Tuck Everlasting;

UPDATE! This is toooooo funny. We went to the book barn to find the Hunger Games and they didn't have it...but DD9 got so excited about books suddently! She had an arm full! On the way home she suddently announces "Ya know why I haven't read anything since I read Harry Potter? 'Cause I liked it so much. I didn't want to leave it behind and move onto other books!" She now thinks she has enough room in her heart to love more than just the Harry Potter characters and said she realized this by reading this 600 Lexile Grimm book!

I never even really spoke with her about her not liking reading anymore. Because she never has really admitted that she didn't like it. She even read a bunch of books over the summer, but not like she used to. It was obvious she wasnt enjoying them like she used to.

Now I know that my intuition was right. She HAS admitted that she wasn't enjoying them. AND it wasn't the teacher's fault or the books fault (although we do have to ignore the Lexile rule), it was just that she didn't want to betray her favorite characters in the whole wide world and she needed time to say goodbye! lol..KIDS!

In other news...my 6 year old is in love with the book soul surfer....and just told me that when she is supposed to be doing guided reading worksheets at school, she hides her pencil, opens her desk, sticks her head in and reads a book. If anyone asks, she is looking for a pencil.

I asked if her teacher has ever noticed. She said yes, but that her teacher knows that she just can't help but to read and that her teacher knows that reading is good!

That just cracked me up. And this is the child I'm not sure is gifted! lol

I still occasionally visit book "friends", some from childhood some more recent. I probably read Anne McCaffrey's Pern series once every 5 years or so. And I've read HP several times too. So I totally get where's your dd is coming from! It's good she's decided that she can make room for new friends too!

In fact, I might just go visit Pern again after I finish my current book!