Schools often put books into different levels to help kids find “just right” books that aren’t too hard or too easy for students’ reading abilities. If a child checks out a book from their school, chances are that the book will have some sort of color or letter (A-Z), to help find appropriate books.
This sounds great, and it works well much of the time in pushing kids to read more difficult texts than kids think they can. After all, as librarians and teachers, we want to encourage students to grow as readers, and reading higher-level books – ones that are within reach – can do this.
But what about all of the books that fall below a child’s reading level?
Don’t throw these babies out with the bathwater!
In fact, studies show there are many benefits to reading these “lower level” books for the sheer, simple pleasure that is reading. Some of these are benefits not even connected to literacy, but are more about developing wonderful things like a growth in empathy, an improvement in relationships, and a reduction in depression.
While the idea of growing a child’s reading level is not harmless at its root, limiting choices to either on level or above has many disadvantages. Top of the list? When you narrow opportunities for children to choose what they want to read, you often also narrow their pleasure in reading itself.
In fact, free choice of reading can create a love for reading and instill both the passion and habits for a child to grow into a life-long reader. There are even studies that show children who have more freedom to choose books that are below their level gain a more positive attitude toward reading and are more likely to select a wider-range of books.
The last thing we want to do is create a pigeonhole that removes the ever-important piece of creating a life-long reader: motivation. Once a child has learned the strategies of selecting a book they want to read for pleasure, they become independent readers for the future. Many adults who have grown into life-long lovers of reading choose books from all sections of the library. The love of reading must be nurtured rather than restricted: the key is more choices, not less.
- Kristina Acosta, Youth Associate, Nathan Hale Library