Hm.

Now, because Ana finds her book-in-a-bag "boring" (and, on that note, I recently informed her that she IS NOT ALLOWED TO LEND HER BOOKS OUT AT SCHOOL, no matter HOW much the other kids want to read 'em), I'm trying to mark these books up with their Guided Reading level so she can pick from her shelf and know she's more or less doing what her teacher wants. (I understand the argument that reading to learn to read means you really want to read something just hard enough, that's fine.)

I'm using Scholastic's Book Wizard, but they're really not as comprehensive as all that. There's a lot of books we have that they don't - and not all obscure ones, either! Is there any other site with a similar function, that I can search for a book and get the reading level? Or how is this determined anyway?

Well, that's done!

Slightly more than half the picture books (don't get me started on the chapters....) are neatly tagged and back on the shelf. There were a few I guessed ("Well, the other four in this series are all 'J', and this one isn't that different from them, so I bet it's a 'J' too"), but mostly if I couldn't find the info I put it neatly in a stack to deal with later.

I've learned a few things. First, I've learned that we have a preponderance of J, K, and L books. Hey, that's the level Ana's on - rock! We also have some M, N, O, and P books, and some H and I books. (And that's just the picture books. I'll get to the chapter books later.) However, everything easier than H, we don't really have, so I'll pick some up this summer so when Evangeline starts reading she'll have some books at home for her to read.

Also, I've learned that half our books aren't listed under Scholastic Book Wizard. I have *got* to find another way to get them tagged up. Having half of them done is just... not gonna happen.

HELP ME!!!!!

LOL.

We all occasionally read guilty-pleasure books, right?

Riiiight. Well, as it happens, I have a real fondness for cheesy made-for-TV movies and equally cheesy made-to-make-a-made-for-TV-movie books. Which is why I was delighted to pick up The Rise of Renegade X for a dollar on Saturday. It's about this boy who's half super-hero, half super-villain, and his hero dad just found out and now he has to stay there a month and a half and it's angsty. Love it!

It's actually well-written for what it is. Not much in the way of awkwardly painful (yet oh-so-hilarious) dialog. And it's worth the potential embarrassment factor of reading this for the scene where ( Spoiler! )

So, when it's actually in print (or if you win it over at goodreads in the giveaway), pick up a copy. You might regret it (if silly isn't your thing), but you might not.

Well, I got directed to a site with more books that can be searched under a different system

Using a correlation chart I think I have everything more or less squared away.

Just a note for anybody worried (I saw DIRE WARNINGS when finding that correlation chart!), I'm not taking this too seriously. This is ONLY to make Ana's required reading for homework less of a pain for all of us. If, on her own time, she chooses to read something "too easy" or "too hard", I don't care at all. I just think that she should read around the level she's "supposed" to be reading for homework, and that there's an easier way to figure that out than pulling every single book off the shelf, doing the "five finger" rule, and ignoring what you discover anyway.