I can tell you as a parent I attempted to "fight" the school reading programs a couple of times until I finally just threw up my hands in defeat and stocked the bookshelves in my kids rooms and hoped for the best.
The Pizza Hut rewards program? .... don't even get me started.
The AR "tests" that cost an arm and a leg for the PTA and taught every child the value of scamming the system for the reward of a pencil with a fuzzy troll on top?
The fabulous reading program our school system bought into that had .. not literature but cliff notes type summaries of real books ... with accompanying multiple choice tests for the teacher to give?
I literally sat at that curriculum night with my mouth hanging open as I was told that my child wouldn't exactly be reading White Fang by Jack London, he'd read an abbreviated version - and then children who were especially interested could check out the full books for themselves. Because yeah, as we all know White Fang is such a long book to begin with how could we possibly expect all the kids to read the whole thing?
One of the many reasons I will always love JK Rowling for the rest of my life is that she once again brought to light the fact that yes indeed, children can read big long books if they want to - and you don't even have to bribe them with pizza to get them to do it.
I think I myself was really lucky in Grade and High School because I mostly had teachers who allowed children to choose from long lists of books for literature. I hardly ever got stuck reading something I absolutely hated.