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Old 04-28-2012, 08:46 PM   #27
Hamlet53
Nameless Being
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyssa View Post
I admit, I have not and probably will not read the article, but the title made me think of this:

In school, a child's reading level is often measured by his/her Lexile. A student's Lexile number is determined by a test that measures the reader's comprehension level through having them read a passage and then answer questions without consulting the text.

The average adult novel is in the 800 to 900 lexile range (approximately on par for middle school level). The Series of Unfortunate Events books range from 1010 to 1370, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is 1030 and Tales of Beedle the Bard is 1290.
Thanks for that link it is interesting. Those results either say something very encouraging about the some of books young people are reading, or very discouraging about the average adult novel.

Though the criteria used in computing that score seem excellent for measuring how young people are progressing in their reading level in school (measuring breath of vocabulary and complexity of sentence structure) there are other things that I feel contribute to how adult, or perhaps a better term would be difficult, a book is such as complexity of themes and challenging comprehension, for examples.

I confess that of the books mentioned in that rather silly piece in the NYT the only one that I have read is the first Harry Potter book. It was a fun tale that I do not feel embarrassed about enjoying it at the age of 50+, but it is a rather simplistic good versus evil story.
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