Book ideas for a 7 year old (with slightly delayed ability)

[MrsSnape]

I would like to get my 7 year old son into independant reading (alongside his school reading obviously) but alot of the books designed for his age group are too difficult for him. I'd say he has the reading age of an average 6 year old.

He seems eager for me to buy Simpsons commics etc which I wouldn't mind him reading but at £3 a go I'd rather buy him a proper book for the same price!

Any recommendations welcome.

You can get books with a CD to accompany them. He could listen to the story while reading along. Toys R Us do these for around £5 or so - Pirates of the Carribean etc. I got them for my son for the car and he loves them!

For more money you could get him a Leap Pad - this is a learning system. you buy books that have a cartridge and insert them into the Leap Pad. The child then uses a 'pen' to follow the words and interact with the story. Usually there are age appropriate puzzles to attempt. got this for ds (he's nearly 6) and it is a great way for them to be independant. However, they are expensive - expect to pay £10+ per 'book and cartridge'. You can get stories such as Cars, Toy Story, Scooby Doo, BAtMan, Sponge Bob etc. If you do go for this, invest in rechargable batteries (think they take AAA).

My ds is just 7yrs. He suddenly got into reading about a year ago when given joke books for christmas.

They had only a few lines, well spread out, on each page with illustrations and obviously don't require the reader to be able to follow a plot.

Of course, all the school-boy humour went down a treat.

I think they just came from Waterstones.

not really being argumentative, but comics are a good starter for boys, despite their price, arent they? at least it encourages them?

Look on BookPeople or Red House for inspiration. I think it was BP that had a set of Horrid Henry joke books recently for not much more than the price of a comic. Jeremy Strong is also ideal for a 6/7 year old.

The Blue and Red bananas books are really good. They are about different things but have different coloured bananas dependent on difficulty - I think Blue ones are for newly independent readers. Our library has loads. I would look there first before buying them.

For other books for you to read to him and him to read a bit (the odd sentence moving on to a paragaraph) I can't recommend the Jake Cake books enough. My son loves them. Also Zac Powers books and Astrosuars books.