Although my child is 6 years old, he has been assessed by our school district as reading at a sixth grade level. My question is, how do I find reading materials that are not inappropriate and yet still challenge his reading abilities? Would you have any recommended reading suggestions?

That’s great. I’ve had a few children like that and it can create a wonderful, but very real dilemma. You’ve got to find age-appropriate material that will still challenge the advanced reader. A great place to start is with your school’s reading curriculum. You can often get 5th & 6th grade reading books from the teachers that have very appropriate school-age stories in them. The stories have to be very generic so as not to offend anyone in the class, but still be at an older reading level. Oftentimes you can find old readers at district office sale or ask an experienced teacher if they still have any copies of older reading curriculum books. They may have some lying about that you could use.

Another great source is obviously your local library and librarian. Describe your dilemma to them and then let them guide you to some wonderful books. It’s a little harder with boys—it seems that there is much more written for and about little girls than for boys—but there are some great books out there. If you have a question about it, read it first to see if it’s OK for your 6-year-old.

A great series of books that I use a lot in cases like these is “Great Illustrated Classics”, published by Baronet Books. These are classic stories like Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Moby Dick, Oliver Twist, etc., but re-written on about a 4th or 5th grade level. The stories are great, classic literature so you know they’re all pretty safe, but written so that they’re readable to children. Most books contain about 200 pages each. It’s still the original story written by the original author, just adapted by someone else to make them children’s literature. There are 20-30 books in the series, so they could potentially keep your son reading for sometime. They also include a brief write up about the author and tell why they wrote the story. I picked up the set at a local bookstore, I’m sure you could do the same. Or a bigger chain like Barnes & Noble could probably order you in as many as you would like.

Another great resource is a Children’s Literature department at a local university. They often have “booklists” that can give you great titles and authors for further investigation. Good luck with your search. It’s a bit more time consuming on your part, but having them read so well is truly a blessing!