> My daughter was reading at 5th grade level when she
 > was in second grade.  The subjects that interested her
 > were to easy, the books that were perfect weren't
 > interesting.  (Clifford the big red dog beat pre-teen
 > romances hands down.)  BB
I hear ya, Tori. My daughters were both that kind of reader. Fortunately, 
Beverly Cleary's Ramona series, Judy Blume's Fudge series, and Carolyn 
Haywood's Betsy series caught my girls' interest early on. I started by 
reading them a Ramona story when they were in first grade and kindergarten, 
respectively. Jennifer picked it up a few months later and reread it, and 
then by 2nd grade, she was really enjoying the Cleary books. Kristin took a 
little longer to release her love for the Berenstain Bears, Clifford and the 
Little Critter series of books, but by her 3rd grade year, she hardly picks 
up those "baby" books.
Story time: I regularly read aloud to my girls, and have since they were less 
than a year old. When Kristin was in Kindergarten, we had "graduated" into 
easy chapter books. Meanwhile, she was attending a good Christian school 
where reading was taught in Kindergarten, so she was getting a solid 
phonics-based reading program on a daily basis. By February, she was just 
about through with the Kindergarten A Beka reading books. One day, her 
teacher came to me after school. "Mrs. Ransdell, Kristin hasn't wanted to 
come to reading group for the past week." We talked, and I promised to try to 
get to the bottom of the problem at home. Well, I did. Kristin said, "But 
Mom, the stories are SO BORING." Then she read me one of them. "Why can't 
this story be like the Fudge book?" she asked me. I went to school the next 
day and looked up the teacher. I explained to Mrs. Verner that Kristin didn't 
want to come to reading group because the stories were boring. Mrs. Verner 
and I laughed that "Ben and the Big Cup" just couldn't compete with "Tales of 
a Fourth Grade Nothing", which we were reading aloud at home. I did tell Mrs. 
Verner that Kristin had promised to go to reading group that day and all the 
following, because she knew she had to build her base of words in reading 
before she'd be able to read "Tales" by herself. The next year, Kristin's 
reading scores were the highest they could go on the standardized test...4.9. 
We still laugh about the kindergarten stories just not being great 
literature...but she laughs at herself, too.
                                 -donna
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