Book bands for non scheme books

[SuperScribbler]

Is there any way to find out what book bands non scheme books equate to? For example Harry Potter novels, Percy Jackson, Roman Mysteries etc.

Well yes and no!

There are other systems that you can use, but you have to be prepared to extrapolate a little. This is because beyond Lime (the final colour in the National book band scheme) the bands revert to publisher's own scheme colours and they do not fit neatly with each other, let alone with real books. For example ORT goes brown, grey, blue and red, where as Collins Big Cat goes Copper, Topaz, Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl. The final colours of both schemes are equivalent to around National Curriculum level 5/6, so around 12 - 14 years old.

One scheme that goes beyond age 14 is the Lexile Measure. However book bands and Lexile measures are not measuring exactly the same things. Nevertheless a Lexile measure gives you an idea of text readability.

You can find the Lexile measure of many real books in the quick book search at the top of this page. Here are some example Lexile measures:-

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - L880
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - L940
The Mystery at the Roman Colloseum - L860
Percy Jackson and the Olympians - L990

Here is a power point that explains all about Lexile measures and at the end has some charts linked to US school year (I think their year 1 = our year 2).

Finally here are a few other charts that may prove useful(ish):-

National Curriculum Book List

Levelled Texts

Thank you - that's very helpful.