Reading+Levels

From: School Library Media & Network Communications [mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Tracey Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 9:53 PM To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Subject: Questons about reading levels for fiction and picture books

At Mackin we get many requests for fiction titles with reading levels, and since several people have recently commented on this topic, I'd like to pass along some statistics--statistics that might help you when your teachers are asking for MS/HS fiction with high reading levels, or for picture books with low reading levels. (I'll be using AR in my stats.)

Middle school fiction is not written at a 6-8 reading level; neither is high school fiction. And what surprises many people is that most ADULT fiction is written at reading levels between 4.0 and 7.0. Why? Because reading fiction is supposed to be fun!!!! Even though I love learning new words and have been reading at a very high level since I was in elementary school, when I read for fun, I don't always want to toil at it. Most people don't, and publishers know it. Here's just one example of a popular adult author: only one of Stephen King's novels has a reading level over 7.0; 20 have reading levels from 6.1-7.0; and 30 have reading levels from 5.0-6.0.

About a year ago, I put together some informtion for Mackin's consultants to pass along when they talked to librarians. I created a list of fiction titles for middle school and high school (all with starred or positive reviews and published between 2001-2011), including adult titles that were appropriate for high school. Out of 3069 tiles, these are the highest reading levels:

6.1-7.0 - 227 titles 7.1-8.0 - 44 titles Higher than 8.0 - 4 titles

There were NO titles with a reading level higher than 8.3.

Reminder: These stats are for current, highly-reviewed FICTION titles only. Only 9% have a reading level over 6.0.

The problem with reading levels, as someone mentioned recently, is that most of them are determined by the difficulty of the vocabulary and maybe the sentence structure and paragraph length. Most of the titles with higher reading levels are classics (not used in my list), but even there you'll find many reading levels are lower than 6 or so. Here are some examples (from unabridged versions):

Lord of the Flies - 5.0 The Old Man and the Sea - 5.1 Dawn (Elie Wiesel) - 5.4 To Kill a Mockingbird - 5.6 All Quiet on the Western Front - 6.0 The Count of Monte Cristo - 6.3

I know that I'm preaching to the choir here, but I just have to say it: Challenging fiction is more than just big words. You wouldn't give Fahrenheit 451 (5.2) or East of Eden (5.3 and 600 pages!) to a 5th grader, or Dracula (6.6) to a 6th grader--just because they are reading at that level. After elementary school, fiction is challenging because of characterization and themes and figurative language and all that other stuff which is very difficult to test in 5 or 10 computer-scored questions.

The reading program I used here was AR, but I personally had the same problem with lexiles. My younger son, in 9th grade at the time, had to read a fiction book at his lexile level: 1500+. After checking out the options on lexile.com (I remember several under-graduate philosophy textbooks), I called his teacher. She said she'd let him go down to 1300; even then, most of what we found were classics (this was supposed to be a book for fun). We finally chose The Sword of Shannara at 1220.

And on the opposite end of this issue, someone mentioned the problem with the high reading level of many picture books. I made another list, this one of picture books with AR levels, published from 2002-2012--again all highly reviewed. Out of 1371 titles, here are the reading level totals:

Lower than 2.0 - 178 titles 2.0 to 2.9 - 442 titles 3.0 to 3.9 - 465 titles 4.0 and above - 286 titles

In general, picture books are for reading to, and since kids can understand at a higher level than they can read, most picture books are not meant for most kids in grades K-1 to read by themselves. Well over half (55%) of the picture books on this list have a reading level of 3.0 or higher.

This got pretty long, and I hope this information is helpful. It is one thing to have to say to a teacher or a parent of a middle/high school student: "I can't find books at that reading level," or "There aren't many novels with that reading level." It's another thing to be able to say, "Out of over 3000 novels for middle and high school, only four have a reading level over 8.0."

Tracey Luehrs - MLIS Mackin Educational Resources Minnesota tracey.luehrs@mackin.com mimla@charter.net

"Google can bring you back 100,000 answers; a librarian can bring you back the right one." - Neil Gaiman