I am working with a kid who is 8 and has a unique cognitive profile. He's very limited in some areas – visual processing, working memory – and because of this, he can't read yet. In other areas – nonverbal processing – he's incredibly smart. I need to read a story a day to him to get an idea of his narrative comprehension. Yesterday, I read Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls to him, and he loved it, but it was a bit long for his attention span.
His interests include dinosaurs, trains, farming, outer space, ocean/sea, superheroes, and construction. I need stories that are short and self-contained. Artwork is less important than plot. Non-fiction is okay, so long as it has a plot. Names of books, series, and authors are very welcome.
by ShipperOfTheseus
3 Comments
Has he had any access to “wonderbooks”? They’re physical books that come with audio embedded in the books. They have picture books, comics, chapter books, even books for adults. I wonder if that would help him feel a little more independent/interested in being exposed to more books.
I can’t remember the rules about links so I will just say they have a website so you can browse (maybe even with him or one of his trusted adults) to see if there’s titles that would interest him.
At that age I loved Sheila K McCullagh’s “Puddle Lane” books. They have 5 stages of complexity/reading skill level, and they have a format where for each double-page spread the left hand page has the story in “reading-to” detail, and the right hand page has a short sentence in larger text summarising the essential action for children who are learning to read to join in or learn to follow the story themselves.
While I know you’re looking specifically to test narrative understanding, something like that could potentially be useful if his desire for plot complexity is currently ahead of his reading ability and he wants to try “reading along” with a book with a plot.
The through-plot is that a Magician lives on Puddle Lane and interactions with him lead to the street having weird features and unusual characters, like toy mice who have come to life. I read the British versions so can’t speak for any localisation changes.
Other than that, Jill Murphy is great, and Judith Kerr too. Idk if that skews younger than you were aiming for though, it’s been ages since I looked at Gaiman’s kids books.
Not sure about length because you mentioned a story a day, but if a book-length story is okay what about Ender’s Game? Or The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson series)?