Living Books for Reluctant Readers?

[moss]

On one level, i really like the idea of books without twaddle, but on another level, i'm ready to feed ds any book he'll read. He's a reluctant reader and is mostly interested in Garfield, Captain Underpants, Star Wars, Spongebob and usborne science books. I read to him all the time (we also listen to lots of books on tape), and include titles that would probably make it onto a 'living books' list, but i would like to start giving him some living books that he can read on his own. I'm not going to take away his twaddle/fluffy books because i do believe that reading can also be ~just for fun~, but i would like to supplement it with some books with substance.

Are there any hi-low (high interest/low vocabulary) lists of 'living books'? I've seen lists like this one: http://charlottemasoneducation.wordp...ture-by-grade/ but the books that are at ds's reading level are too young for him.

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[zeldamomma]

It's not a list of "living books", but Scholastic lets you search for books, setting "interest level" and reading level separately. You can also choose topics or genre.

http://bookwizard.scholastic.com/tbw/homePage.do

If you wanted a larger selection of graphic novels (some are really pretty good!), you could checkout Sidekicks: http://www.noflyingnotights.com/sidekicks/index.html

[moss]

thanks, those look like useful sites to browse around on and find some ideas

in case anyone else is following this thread, i found a blog article that was also interesting: http://thethinkingmother.blogspot.co...childrens.html she uses lexile.com (similar to the scholastic site) to find books at the right reading level for her kids and then weeds thru to find living books from the results.

i was kind of hoping to find some lists with the work already done for me...

[jessicaSAR]

I think the lists of readers in the reader packages on the Sonlight website are fantastic. They have done a great job of picking out quality children's books at all reading levels and building the difficulty level very gradually. They also have a test on the website to help you find his reading level.

[moss]

Thanks jessicaSAR, we poked around on the sonlight site and found their reading assessment.

Ds nailed all of the word lists up to the 6th reader level, where he started to falter a bit. It was really nice to see that!! He said~~i get my reading skills from Garfield!! LOL Anyways, it looks like his reading skills are a lot stronger than i thought they were. Now i just have to find living books that will appeal to him. Thankfully, now we have a much wider range to pull from.

[PJsmomma]

Have you seen the book finder on Simply Charlotte Mason?

It's free to use. I just used it to find some Civil War books for next year. You just enter the subject and age range and tons of suggestions come up.

[moss]

thx PJsmomma, I found a some books that my library has in stock using the bookfinder you recommended.

[PJsmomma]

Good Glad I could help. I think it's a cool tool when I remember to use it.