Lexile

I do not like Lexile reading levels. As a librarian they do nothing but frustrate me. Why? Because I feel that a focus on a tested reading level inhibits, rather than helps, the reading process for kids.

The Lexile is a magical number that is supposed to help match kids with books that are at exactly the right reading level for them. If, for example, your child has a Lexile rating of 800L you can take comfort that any book with a Lexile rating of 800 will be "just right" for him/her. However, Lexile ratings need to be taken with a very sizable grain of salt.

The most important thing to consider is that Lexile ratings for books do not take into account the content of a book, its style, or its format. Instead, Lexile considers other factors when determining how difficult a book is to read: Sentence length and word frequency. While I think we can all agree that these two factors are important things to consider when searching for the perfect book, they're not the only things that matter.

Let's look at a couple of examples of deceptive Lexile ratings:

Consider these two books: Changes for Addy (an American Girl book - I usually give these to kids in grades 2-5) and The Lightning Thief (a Percy Jackson book - I usually give this series to kids in grades 5-10). Which would you guess is the more challenging book? If you were to guess The Lightning Thief, you'd be wrong. While this book has a Lexile rating of 740L, Changes for Addy has a Lexile of 760L. Not a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, but it's significant when you consider the age of the child that each of these books targets.

Interestingly enough: May of the other books in the Percy Jackson series have significantly lower Lexile ratings than The Lightning Thief. So am I supposed to tell a 12-year-old coming to the library that his Lexile matches up with The Lightning Thief and that it's such a great book and he'd really like it...but uh oh! His teacher won't want him to read the sequels because they're way below his Lexile level and are therefore "too easy."

What about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series? Heavy with cartoon illustrations, this has been the go-to series for reluctant readers everywhere since it was first published in 2007. You'd think that these books would be fairly easy to read, given how quickly most kids tear through them. But a look at the Lexile ratings for the series shows that these books are - in theory - quite challenging with Lexile ratings ranging from 950L-1060L!

As a librarian, it is very painful for me to watch some children and parents struggle with Lexile. Though the Lexile website includes lots of information on how to use Lexile ratings and specifically encourages users to take other factors into consideration, the fact is that all of this is forgotten by the time infomation on this system is passed down from the Lexile company to the teachers to the students to their parents. In the end what most kids/parents hear when their teachers talk about Lexile is that, "I have to read books in this Lexile range or they're not good books for me." And that's just not true! It's hard to watch kids struggle to fine the perfect book under a system that doesn't take their interests or maturity level into consideration.

So parents, if your child comes home from school with a Lexile rating, please don't take it too seriously. Your child did not become a good reader by reading really hard books. He will not become a better reader by reading books with a magical Lexile number. The fact is that kids become good readers by reading a lot, no matter what kind of reading it is. Kids read a lot when they learn that reading can be fun, and it's very hard to develop a love of reading when your teachers put all of these restrictions on the books that you select. There is so much more to finding the perfect book than a number that evaluates word usage. So please, let the Lexile go and help your child find books that he will enjoy so that reading becomes a pleasure rather than a chore.