“Appropriate.” Such a dangerous word when it comes to children and literature. Is it too violent? Too sexual? Too profane? All of these are parental concerns, naturally, but taken too far can be … limiting to a child. Exposure to different viewpoints via literature is a powerful experience, and something I personally wouldn’t deny a child without good reason. On the other hand, reading material meant for more mature audiences (even the difference between children and teenagers) is a delicate balance when you’re young, but ultimately, I find it hard to prescribe censorship of any literature. A book might be perfectly acceptable in my opinion, but I’m a 20-something, idealistic, extremely liberal woman with no religious affiliation or children of my own. So, what’s acceptable for me, might not be so for the parent at the other end of the sociopolitical spectrum. Overall, it’s my opinion that parents need to read what their children read – especially in the case of these so-called “controversial” texts – so they can be aware of issues that may come up and address them if necessary.

So is Twilight “appropriate?” Having previously vowed a life of Twilight-celibacy, I wasn’t in a good position to answer such a question. Well, abstinence-only sex-ed doesn’t work, and neither does a life un-touched by Twilight, especially when you work with kids in a library. So, I read it. I read the whole thing. Why? So I could write a BOOK REPORT on it. It’s forthcoming, probably in several instalments… What I plan to do is give summaries of each book (with as much brevity as can be expected) and then let the criticizing (for better or worse) begin. Stay tuned!

So, what are people looking for easy readers really looking for? I’d say… levels. In assistance to us, most publishers of “easy readers” have split their books up into various levels of reading development from “see spot run” to full paragraphs of compound words that still retain a certain size of type and no indentation (or so I’ve been led to believe). Usually they number these levels 1-4 – (Frog and Toad fall into about a level 2-3, to give you an idea) – but different publishers have tried to get a jump on the competition by formulating different crafty gimmicks. There’s Green Light Readers from Harcourt, the funnily named “Bananas” series from Crabtree Publishing, and the list goes on. Some have 3 levels, some have 5… some just have colours! So it makes it a little difficult for the ambitious librarian really find crosswalks to make decisions on what colour of banana counts as a Level 3 read, (I personally think it’s Red Bananas, though others may disagree). So this is my project, if the Children’s Services Committee chooses to accept it – making navigating Easy Readers more intuitive for parents and children. We’ll see how that goes.

As a final side note: For older readers just graduated from Easy Readers, the Nibbles, Bites, Chomps series is a good, canned way to help parents guide their kids along the road to reading without much serious readers advisory effort. This recommendation is kid-approved (it was, after all, a kid who brought the series to my attention), and librarian tested.