Book ideas for nine year old with reading comp delays?

[tilly2329]

Hi there,

I have a nine year old (almost ten) DS with AS who decodes beautifully, but has about a one to two year reading comp delay. He also has listening comp issues, despite fast forward and intensive speech and language therapy. We are still a work in progress. I find that he loves to read with me- in that I read a page and he follows along and then we talk about it before moving on and having him read a page. Right now, we are reading a book that is about at a 900 lexical level, way over his head, but he wanted to read it based on a friend's recommendation. I love reading with him and doing think alouds and working on comp, but I want him to try to start doing some more independent reading where he can actually understand more of the story on his own. I think that he would do better in the six hundred lexical range. He read Henry Huggins and did OK with that. Any good series to recommend? He doesn't want series that are too young for him, but he really is more at a second grade comp level. His interest are wide and varied. For example, the book we are reading now has wizards and mythical creatures which I would have never thought he would like, but he does! It is called the "secret of platform 13" and is a great story. He also loved the BFG by Roald Dahl, but I read that with him. Any ideas?

[MomatHWTK]

Not sure of the level, but maybe the Redwall series. There are a few titles available as graphic novels and there are animated movies of the series as well. You could supplement with the movies to tie it all together. The same is true of the Narnia series.

[Celia]

Mr. Popper's Penguins is a pretty easy storyline to follow, with a smattering of more difficult or old fashioned words thrown in that could be nice to help him develop vocabulary/dictionary skills. Not a series, though it's a good one for a kid with AS who has difficulty with perspective taking, because there's not a lot of places where it's hard to understand why people are making the choices they are. That's what trips my AS son up the most with his reading comprehension... all those darn feelings that motivate people to do stuff!