Restricting school library book choice by year group.

[waitingforwombat]

My DD is 5, in year 1. She is a confident, fluent reader (she has just finished reading me Fantastic Mr Fox). School are vv cautious about moving up book bands, but reassessed her at the beginning of the year and put her onto orange band, whixh she reads in a couple of minutes with no difficulty. Notes in her reading diary this week have been "wow, fluent reading", and "superb expression and understanding". Trying not to be too PFB, and to just go with the flow on school reading books.

DD really looking forward to going to school library. Our local library has massively cut their hours, and now isn't open at the weekend at all, and sadly only open during the week on days I'm at work. She was hoping to get a new Roald Dahl/Enid Blyton. She has come home massively disappointed that she was only allowed to choose from the "reception/year one" shelf. She has sensibly chosen a fact book rather than a "boring easy book - just like my school books". There were no chapter books at all.

Would it be reasonable to ask that she has access to higher level books in the library? I get that there might be issues with content, but she is used to that (it's an ongoing issue with a confident reader). She goes to the school library once a week, and a new chapter book weekly would be fantastic for her.

Anyone has a similar issue/successfully challenged this?

I think that stage where the children are reading early chapter books such as e.g. the easier Roald Dahl is exactly the time when libraries are very helpful. Most such books are not really books you want to keep re-reading and keep for posterity. But kids can get through A LOT of them. If you buy them (from the book people or charity shops) yes you will only pay perhaps £1/book but as you might be needing hundreds of them, it still adds up (DS at that stage definitely read >200 books/year). Also you end up with having to store them somewhere, especially if you have another child who might want to read them eventually - you don't want to return them to charity shop just to re-buy them for the next child. We have about 500 books (on top of picture books) in the kids' bedroom... That's £500 invested and a lot of space taken up.

Our school no longer has a school library, sadly. I think schools that do have a library should have a large section (that might look like my kids' bedroom ;) with chapter books that are appropriate for small children. They don't need to be 'good literature' nor stretching and challenging, just a good selection of books a child can read for fun, and to explore various genres and styles, without having to worry about inappropriate content.

Maybe after DC2 is through with them, I will donate our 'home library' of 'easy' chapter books to a local school (if only to make space at home!)

I have to say i though it would get more interesting when we got to free reader, but no as the books are ks1 books.
I do resent a littke everyone including the TA wasting time giving such easy books. But think how much we could have progressed reading if we had only read the appropriate level?! Or even spent the time on maths etc.

Definitely raid charity shop book sections. 90% of our books are second hand. But talk to the teacher too and ask if she could go up a band for school books, my daughter was similar and the year 1 teacher didn't believe me when I said she was already on white at the end of reception, she put her back on orange! I gently suggested she speak to the Reception teacher "just to check", but she still wasn't convinced. She then decided as a compromise to allow her one orange and one white book every time she changed her books, and very soon realised she was fine with white, thank you very much!

You can buy used books off eBay for a couple of pounds each (free delivery). I've bought some that look new.

Also, is there another library you could drive to once a fortnight? You could max out two library cards if necessary.