My daughter is in the first grade and she is learning to read. Until the first grade, I would have characterized her as more interested in the pictures\u00a0 than the text (like most kids are) but with a keen interest in decoding words. She has always demonstrated a voracious appetite for narrative and informational texts alike and my husband and I have fed her on a diet of rich and varied high-interests books, websites and magazines. Print — in traditional and digital forms — surrounds her at home. She sees us reading almost constantly (I am a doctoral student after all; my husband is a professor of history…) and we make a big deal about almost anything related to reading.<\/p>\n

Over the past couple of months, however, I have heard her say things such as, “I was tested again this week and I moved up a level” and “I’m a level J reader, Mom, I can’t read level K books” and “This book is NOT at my level. I can’t read it,” and most dishearteningly,\u00a0 “I don’t want to read those words, they’re too hard.”<\/p>\n

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