Books or a 6 year old with reading age of 10

[NotAnotherChinHair]

Hi there. Title says it all really; I'd like to find books for my 6 year old DS who has a reading age of 10. I'd like them to be challenging but age appropriate. Cheers all.

When my son was 6 and had a reading age of 9.6, he read:-
Horrid Henry
Captain underpants
Roald dahl
Jiggy Mccue
Jack Stalwart
Mr Gum

Do you live near Richmond on Thames? There is a fantastic little children's bookshop there called Lion and unicorn. It seems to have everything every written fro children there and if you and your DS could go there one day you'd come away with a stack of ideas for books that would be just right for his age, reading ability and tastes. I can't recommend it enough

LaQueen there are a few children such as your daughter (my son was much the same reading the Financial Times to his grandpa at age 4 and his favourite bedtime reading around age 6 or 7 was a breakdown of the NATO deployment in Europe)who seem able to read with no (or certainly very little effort). As you say developing understanding usually requires greater effort and possibly spelling doesn't match decoding??

I think so. Children need time to be children. There shouldn't be such a rush to reach the next stage. Enjoy her childhood innocence it passes so quickly.

Mrz - what do you tend to do with children like this in terms of reading levels e.g. if they were able to 'read' a much higher level of book than they can understand, would you put them on the lower level, higher or in between so that they could still encounter new vocab?

I would be looking at books they can understand rather than books at a level that challenges their ability to decode, and yes new vocabulary should be a feature.

My DD is a pretty good reader at 6. But I know from discussing with her that she has, for example, only a limited comprehension of rather complicated plots on e.g TV and hence I think her comprehension of more complicated plots in books would be also limited. But what she reads on her own (tbh, Tiara Princesses and Rainbow fairies) she understands pretty well. DS on the other hand was much slower to read - but his comprehension and attention span was fantastic (would listen for many hours to multi-chapter books at 4yrs old). At 9 he is an exceptional and fluent reader who gobbles up complicated books. I am not sure DD will be (although she is at the moment streets ahead of where he was).

I think sometimes ds does not have sufficient world experience to get some of the plots in the harder books. So for example, he doesn't know what a kidnapping is and there was one in his reading book so I had to explain it. He would not have therefore been able to explain the plot to me without my help. This is the sort of thing he struggles with rather than understanding a story per se IF it's about issues he has come across.

I think sometimes ds does not have sufficient world experience to get some of the plots in the harder books. So for example, he doesn't know what a kidnapping is and there was one in his reading book so I had to explain it. He would not have therefore been able to explain the plot to me without my help. This is the sort of thing he struggles with rather than understanding a story per se IF it's about issues he has come across.