Banned books list

Lauren in our text measurement group is getting a library studies degree and has been feeding the rest of us some really interesting information. Here's a USA Today article on book-banning efforts around the country. It has a great sortable table at the bottom of the article that is really worth checking out -- it contains the reasons that requests have been made to ban a book, as well as the eventual decision that librarians and educators made about the book.

Here are the top ten most frequently challenged books, and their Lexile measures:

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell: AD720L
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier: 820L
Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes: 680L
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: 930L
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: 990L
The Color Purple by Alice Walker: NC670L
TTYL by Lauren Myracle: NP
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: 1070L
It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris: no measure
The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: 720L

-- posted by Chris Vitiello, School-Based Initiatives

I'm blogging the Oregon/Washington school library conference. Stay tuned!

What reading levels are for

This week, the Los Angeles Times ran an interesting opinion piece, "Reading shouldn't be a numbers game," by Regina Powers, an Orange County public librarian and former teacher. She expresses frustration with the misapplication of reading programs in schools, particularly in the extrinsic motivations they attach to reading, like quiz points. She also asserts that children are best served by simply reading about what they're interested in. Here's her lead:

School has started. I can tell because frazzled parents drag their embarrassed children up to the reference desk at my library to ask, "Where are the fifth-grade books? We need a 5.6 level that's worth at least 7 points."
I avoid frustrating both parties with an explanation of how the Dewey decimal system works, and ask the child, "What do you like to read?" The response from both adult and child is all too often a blank expression.

Amen, sister. Any reading program that forces a random book into a young person's hand -- or, worse yet, takes a book out of a young person's hand -- is basically a crime against humanity. We should discuss their shortcomings in The Hague.

If you want to grow readers, it's imperative that you help connect them with books they want to read. How you help them is the key. Here is our response to Mrs. Powers' piece, which the newspaper unfortunately did not print:

Reading levels matter

Regina Powers ("Reading shouldn't be a numbers game," Sept. 30) is absolutely right that the best way to raise passionate readers is to allow them to choose books in which they are interested.

However, matching a child's reading ability to an appropriate level of text difficulty is another critical piece of the literacy puzzle. Often a child - especially a struggling or reluctant reader - will disengage from a book that's too difficult. Likewise, a book that's too easy doesn't expose a child to the new vocabulary and sentence structures crucial to reading growth.

Studies by Dr. James S. Kim while at the University of California at Irvine support the benefits of leveled, high-interest reading. In a summer reading intervention program, students who read whatever they wanted didn't show gains, while those who combined interest with reading level did.

In fact, based on this research, parents and children can go to the free "Find a Book with Lexiles" site to search tens of thousands of books in their areas of interest and California Reading List level. New and current books are added all the time. The site even lets you look up books in your local public library.

Increasingly, librarians are taking the opportunity to build a strong school-home connection by listing book measures in their catalogs. Arm a librarian with a student's California Reading List number and personal interests, and that child walks out of the library with a backpack full of books that will challenge him as he enjoys them.

Children should read what they want to read, and book levels can help keep them reading and growing.