Way back in June, nearly 8 months ago, Sarah made a Reader’s Choice request for some book recommendations at a Level M (DRA 24-28 depending on which equivalency measure you use). Although I am certain that Sarah’s daughter must be far beyond Level M books by now, her quest for quality books at that level is one I believe many parents and teachers share.
When children continue their journey as readers they begin to enter the world of chapter books. This transition usually occurs at the beginning of third grade, but for some it can happen earlier. No longer are they expending as much energy on decoding words and making sense of the sentences. Now they are ready for more characters, more plot and longer books. Often children that age get caught up in the safety and security of a series. They might binge read Magic Tree House books (click here for write ups of the first two in the series). Or they might fall for wacky, smart-alecky Junie B. Jones (My write up of the first in the series is here.) The benefits of getting a child interested in a series are many. Often a new reader will still be putting a lot of energy into reading and is loathe to choose something they fear they may not enjoy. A series offers the promise of more of the same. Reading a series can help a child learn about how to make predictions based on what you know of the character or what you know of the author. And a series means there’s always something on hand to read, with no dreaded choices to make.
Sometimes it falls to parent, teachers and librarians to make suggestions to help guide their children into more varied, diverse or simply more interesting books (or hey, just a different series). And this month I’ll do my best to help you with that.
Tomorrow: What is Level M?
Love these posts. My son is a first grader and reading level L currently. I’ll check out sons of your recommendations! I’m thinking by summer he will be ready.
He loved the Whimpy Kid series and read them all pretty quickly. What level would you estimate those books to be? And do you have any recommendations on other series if he liked this one?
Thank you!
If he enjoyed Diary of a Wimpy Kid, you might look at the Stink series by Megan McDonald and the Black Lagoon series by Mike Thaler (look for the chapter books labeled Black Lagoon adventures rather than the picture books). Both of these series are close to his reading level, Black Lagoon Adventures has a comic/graphic novel feel similar to Wimpy Kid but slightly younger audience content. A bit harder but very funny are the Wayside School books by Louis Sacher. Also try asking what he liked about Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The series is listed as a Level T by Scholastic and that sounds about right to me.