My 7 yo son just finished The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. He can decipher words beautifully and his fluency is coming along nicely. His problem (not actually a problem, but I'm looking to help him grow here) is that anything longer than a grade 2 picture book tires him when he is reading it. I can physically see him getting tired from all that brain work, which is fine....mental work is tiring.
I would like to get him started and excited about reading chapter books on his own (or reading to me since he refuses to read on his own) but all the choices I have found at the library are too difficult (print too small and overwhelming) or junk. It seems like our only choices are Captain Underpants, or early chapter books put out by Disney or Star Wars and the like.
I would really appreciate some suggestions for first chapter books, or books that help transition into chapter books and how to ease him into them. He gets easily overwhelmed by a whole page of print, even though he is able to read difficult words. I'm also not sure if I am pushing him too much in expecting that he should be able to read for 15 minutes straight. He has great comprehension when he is reading (I think so anyways, but my comprehension isn't the greatest lol). We have are using the Scholastic reading levels as a guide to pick our books from the library and are currently doing GRL I, which is Grade 2 stuff, although at the end of TOPGTTR, it says that you are reading Grade 4 Level words.