Now I like my books, Like really like my books and feel that with this love for my paper and hardback companions I feel it's somewhat a responsibility that I encourage the younger generation to read books…but books that are good and expand the variety of words that the child can use before they reach secondary school. No harm in knowing those little extras. So I was looking over one of my old favourites the lovely, magical ‘Dragons Breath’ By E.D. Baker and realised just how easy it was, now I know we as the world have changed the methods in which we read things and progress from one level of books to another but hadnt realise just how annoying sentences of about 18 words each could be.
Why is that? You may ask, well where is the challenge?! I may have been 9 when I read it but common…the longest sentence was 38 words in the first 5 pages and that was when the character was telling a story. Just seems a tad off.
And the rhyming ’that’, ’fat’, ’three’, ’see’ I think that’s just overly basic for a book which I bought in the 8 – 12 section of a bookstore many moons ago, but maybe I’m just being harsh, the words are fairly common and stick around the broad subject matter of magic and fantasy, without drifting into to hard a set of words, ‘banishing’, ‘magic’x5 and ‘spells’ and ‘trolls’ and ‘witches’ and a maybe the spells that rhyme are just sticking with a stereotype within magical children’s books where spells tend to rhyme e.g. Meg and Mog (If you were never introduced to these as a child, I suggest you go and find one to read. Now!). It just seems a bit sad too how a novel that would appeal to so many seems to encourage running away if you don’t like something ‘I hid in the swamp unwilling to meet with him.’Cause a little bit of danger is always good ;] and being a princess is oh so hard(brat alert).
I’m just flustered about it after I did a little experiment with it using this formula to calculate how easy/ what age would understand it? And boy was I surprised.
Basically I found out that this book, I read when I was 9, has a reading age of like 16+ grade level College and it’s score on this ease thing (Flesch is his name if your interested) was 46.04 it goes on a base of the lower the score the harder the text. But yeah I was a bit like woah….
I had always thought older children books were harder too be fair, one of the classics I remember on in my primary schools library was ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’ I’ve seen the film…first 5 pages of this late 19th century English translation much harder to get a grip on than the film version (;P obviously) but when I did that test on this book the reading age was 13-16 8th – 9th grade or year 9/10 for us, ease score a humongous 60.235 interesting really how the number of big words can make a difference, ‘doubly’, ‘latitude’, ‘fervently’, ‘resignation’ and ‘against’ just some of them (which I doubt I would’ve understood had I picked this up in the library) and to top that off when you’re the tender age of 8 how would you like the idea of reading a 68 word sentence.
But there’s the catch ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’ actually has more big words it’s just drowned out by a load of ‘I’s and ‘is’ and ‘and’s courtesy of the Pastor the protagonist of this adventurous story, I don’t understand how it’s ‘easier’ it expresses a lot more in these first few pages than ‘Dragons breath’. It manages to introduce God in the 4th sentence ‘…praying Him in mercy to show us a way of escape’ and keep that theme going supposedly it’s his doing that keeps his children’s ‘confiding disposition’
I guess I was right in thinking that the older children’s classics were harder seeing as this 19th century novel is teen fiction by today’s standards but I mean ‘Dragons breath’….college level I take back what I said about kids books today being easier but I still ain’t seeing what’s so difficult about this one…
