Children's Literature: Chapter Books

Do you remember the first time you read a chapter book?  Do you remember the first time you read one and loved it?  My favorite chapter book growing up was the first book in the Box Car Children series.  Oh how I dreamed as I read of finding a boxcar and living like they did.  They had nothing but made life seem so perfect.  I was one of those kids who was constantly playing in the woods behind our house....miles and miles of woods.  I looked for stream beds, raked leaves, built forts and club houses and tree houses.  I think that the Box Car Children was my first real connection to independent reading growing up.  I tried to find a definition for Chapter Books...here's what I found!

• A chapter book is a story book intended for intermediate readers, generally age 7-10. Unlike picture books for younger readers, a chapter book ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_book
• Fairly modern term referring to books for older children which are organized into chapters, as opposed to "picture books", which often ...
• www.chaucerhead.com/ioba_book_glossary.htma book long enough to be divided into chapters but not long or complex enough to be considered a novel, as books in Cynthia Rylant's Henry and ...
  www.nde.state.ne.us/read/framework/glossary/general_a-e.html
  
  

They are all correct! 

So, where can you start?  Let's start with the best of the best!  The Newbery Award Winners.  Visit this link to learn more about the Newbery Award, so that it's not just a stamp on a book at the library.  This link will take you to what the Award is all about and a list of all the books.  Don't just a book by it's cover?  But, maybe you can judge it by it's title?  Why?  When encouraging your child to love reading, you may want to consider the topic.  Start looking for books that your child would be interested in and go from there!  Also Amazon.com publishes a great list of recommended reading for Intermediate Readers

Around second grade you should see stories that your child is reading becoming longer, with fewer pictures and maybe even very short chapters.  You may even see this sooner than later.

What if it's later than sooner?  Read chapter books to your child.  As a matter of fact, it's always a good idea to introduce these types of books to your child at an early age.  It helps them to use their imagination without the use of pictures.  It causes their brain to make it's own pictures that correlate with the story.  We can go more in detail with that later.  You always want your child to be trying to read something that is a tad harder than what they'd like it to be and you always want to try to read something to your child that is entertaining but something they could not possibly read yet.  This sets the stage for helping your child master the Intermediate phase of reading.