Ages 9 to 12: 4th to 6th grade reading
A longer story with subplots, and paths you can choose.
What a book at this level is
Every draft is measured against these numbers before anybody sees it. A book that falls outside them is rewritten, and if it still can’t be brought inside them, we don’t send it.
- Length
- 8000 to 15000 words, aiming at 10000
- Pages
- 24 to 50, with 200 to 400 words on each
- Longest sentence
- 24 words
- Reading grade
- Flesch-Kincaid 4 to 7
- TaleTykes level
- 700 to 1050, on a scale of our own
- Typically read in
- 4th to 6th grade
- Pictures
- 3 to 5
- Chapters
- 8 to 14, ending where you want to keep going
- How much is people talking
- Between 20 and 55 percent
- Built from sounds they know
- No, because nobody at this age is sounding a book out alone
- Danger in the story
- Moderate. The stakes are real, and the reader can see the resolution coming.
What the story is like
How it is put together
Three acts with a reversal at the midpoint, a subplot that pays off before the ending, and a resolution that costs the character something.
What is worth worrying about
Who they are, who they are loyal to, and being afraid of failing at something that matters.
What is funny at this age
Things going wrong in front of you. Wordplay, which arrives when a child can hold two meanings of a word at once. A joke that comes back bigger each time. We never use sarcasm. A child who can’t hear it yet takes it literally, and in a story that usually comes across as unkind.
The shapes a story takes
chapters, branching
Verse is not used at this age.
The levels either side
Children move between these levels at very different speeds, and how fast they go doesn’t matter much. We move a reader on when the books they actually read show they are ready, whatever their birthday says.