Is there a danger in kids reading books outside their level?
The main thing I worry about when kids read books that are too difficult for them – that are outside their level – is that they don’t understand them and, as such, the conclusion they reach is that reading is boring. If you’re reading something and you have no idea what it means, it is going to be boring. I usually try to pull kids back to their own reading level and leaver the other book until later. That was one of my hugest complaints about Harry Potter: everyone was reading Harry Potter and most of them had no idea what was going on because it was too advanced. I thought, ‘Your parents are so excited that you’re reading, but you’re not getting anything from it because you’ve no idea what you’re reading.’ Between the difficult content, the British phrasing and the length of the books, it wasn’t useful for most of the kids that were reading it. I try to steer them away from Harry Potter, if I can, and back to their own reading level. If they want to read something like Harry Potter,
