Authors Who Grow With Their Readers

There is nothing like seeing a familiar name on a bookshelf, whether it is the name of a character (ooh, look, a new (the last) Clementine book is out!) or that of an author (hey, a new book by Rebecca Stead!).  But often as a child grows and leaves pictures books behind (mostly!  please, not entirely!), she leaves certain authors in her wake.  Some very talented authors, however, write for a range of ages, from picture books to early readers to early middle grade chapter books to harder chapter books.  It is such a delight to not have to say good-bye to these authors on our reading journey.

School Library Bulletin Board

If you are reading this blog you probably, like me, always read the name of the author and illustrator when you read aloud to your children.  As toddlers and preschoolers, mine got into the habit of imitating this.  When one of my daughters "read" (that is, pretended to read), she would make up a title for the book and then announce "by Kevin Henkes."  She attributed all her pretend books to him, as we read so many by him that she had heard his name again and again.

Well, lucky for her,   Now at age 7, her first-grade teacher is reading Henkes's early chapter book The Year of Billy Miller to her class, which she is loving.  And personally, I preferred his Junonia, a slightly harder chapter book about a girl who has to get used to the fact that life means that things change.

One of my favorite and most versatile authors is Grace Lin.  From picture books (e.g., Fortune Cookie Fortunes) to early readers (the Ling and Ting series), to early grade books (the Pacy Lin books)  to more complex novels like Starry River of the Sky and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, she hits it out of the park every time.

And there's Cynthia Rylant.  While I think that her early readers have taken on a formulaic quality, her picture books (e.g., The Relatives Came, In November), chapter books (e.g. The Van Gogh Cafe) and poetry (e.g., God Got A Dog - for middle schoolers and up) stand out.

Who is your favorite writer for all ages?

The Trouble With Double Yellow

My daughter's school uses the Fountas and Pinnell system of leveled readers.  The books (and children!) are rated on a scale of A (easiest) to Z.  Presumably to avoid competition and feelings of inadequacy, the school marks the books with colored stickers rather than the letters.  Of course, the kids figure out the meaning of the stickers right away!

My daughter's teacher has her reading at Level J (or, "double yellow" in sticker parlance), which are heavy on Cynthia Rylant's Henry and Mudge and Mr. Putter and Tabby books.  When she recently told me that the double yellow books are too easy for her, we decided she'd ask her teacher if she could try harder books.  But before she had a chance to do so, she came home with Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully, marked with the same double yellow stickers.

Mirette is a far cry from Henry and Mudge.  My daughter can read 95% or more of the individual words in Henry and Mudge and understands them all.  In Mirette, though, she was faced with words she either couldn't pronounce or didn't know the meaning of - or both!  And while she is pretty good at figuring out the meaning of words from context, these had her stumped, and with good reason.  Mirette contains words like vagabond and widow and boardinghouse and phrases like "traveling players."  Not something your average New York City first-grader is familiar with and not exactly in the same class as Henry and his big dog Mudge!  While it is great to read about unfamiliar things, this book is completely impenetrable to my daughter on her own.  It is far from a "just right" book, as books that are supposedly on her level should be.

While the contrast between the difficulty of Henry and Mudge and Mirette is dramatic, it's not the first time I've noticed inconsistencies among books which are ostensibly at the same level.  No leveling system can be perfect but, given these inconsistencies, how useful are these systems?  Are they popular now because they are yet another way to "objectively" evaluate student (and, by erroneous extension, in my opinion, teacher) progress?  They are helpful as general guidelines, I think, but not beyond that. 

What is your experience with leveled readers?