I love being surprised by Boo when it comes to likes and dislikes with literature. I adore having a front row seat to seeing how she reacts to exploring with words and stories.
Take The Giving Tree. We are huge Shel Silverstein fans but after reading her The Giving Tree Boo made me promise to NEVER read her that horrible book again. Of course the issue was the strong emotional response she had to the book not her dislike, although she couldn't express that at the time. She understood and related to the message so clearly even now she still refuses to read it.
Just as equally telling Boo, the self proclamation history hater has once again picked a historical based book as her favorite book EVER. The first one she fell in love with was last year. It was the Freedom Train, the story of Harriet Tubman. This time it is Helen Keller's Teacher, the story of Annie Sullivan. And what else beside history do they have in common? The central character is a strong woman overcoming both physical and social barriers for themselves. Then they use their success to help others.
As for independent reading, Nate The Great has come to our rescue! As Boo gets older her desire to read more complex story lines is increasing. She doesn't want her visual disability to confine her to "baby" readers. But most chapter books have too small of font or print too close together or both for her to read them. The Kindle helps a little but not as much as we had hoped it would. There just isn't enough large print options out there.
Turns out the answer (for now) has been on our bookshelf just waiting to be discovered. The reading level of most of the Nate The Great books is about 2.2 which is a bit lower than where Boo reads but the humor is winning her over. And reading at any level is reading!!!! The humor is probably why the interest level of the books is rated for grades 3-5. Best of all there are tons of these books around we happen to have 6 already. I am sure more are in our new future.
