Bands of Book Difficulty—and Ways That Predicting the Challenges Readers Will

Encounter as They Progress Towards More Demanding Texts Might Inform Our
Teaching

Principles

The TCRWP thought collaborative is convinced that as readers learn how to process a
variety of increasingly challenging texts with understanding and fluency these texts,
invariably, become more complex. Which is to say, as readers move into higher levels of
book-difficulty, there are many ways a text can be challenging. One needs only to read a
handful of randomly chosen books at almost any level (beyond K) to quickly realize that
any attempt to delineate the characteristics of a particular text-level will not pertain to the
whole universe of books at that level. There are many ways for a book to be at any one
level of text difficulty.

More importantly, we question whether teaching improves if each time a teachers works
with a reader, the teacher needs to recall and teach into the 14 characteristics of that
specific level of text-difficulty. After all, the teacher will also need to keep an eye on the
reader’s volume of reading, the reader’s abilities to talk and write about reading, the
reader’s work with a host of skills including fluency, envisionment, prediction,
interpretation, critical reading and so on. We do not think, therefore, that it is
advantageous for teachers to attempt to keep in mind a score of tiny characteristics for
each and every level of book difficulty.

On the other hand, it is absolutely important for teachers to be aware that as readers
progress to increasingly complex texts, they must handle new sources of difficulty.
Although the books that are labeled as a particular level will not all have matching
characteristics, there are some general characteristics of texts that one will tend to find at
different bands of text difficulty. If a teacher grasps the general characteristics of any one
band of text-levels, he or she can also be aware of whether a child is just entering that
band, or is about to leave that band (in which case the reader will need to develop the
skills that will be required of the next band while still working with these easier texts).

How can text-levels be grouped into bands-of-like-books? There is no clear answer. But
by seeing the places where progress up the ladder of difficulty seems to stall and by
looking for which book-levels tend to put many new demands on readers, one can
develop some tentative groupings. These, for now, are the bands that we currently see
(this document focuses on the levels one sees in upper grade classrooms). For each band
of book difficulty, we ask, “What does this band require readers to do that they were not
doing before?”

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I. Bands of Book-Difficulty: K,L,M (Teacher’s Pet or Nate the Great to The Paint
Brush Kid

Readers Need to Carry Meaning Across the Text, So Determining Importance (Locating
the Central Plot Line) Becomes Important

Before now, books were usually comprised of self-contained chapters, with each 4-5 page
chapter being a new episode about the same set of characters. These episodic chapter-
books didn’t require readers to carry a lot of content across broad swatches of texts, or
from one reading-time to another. If the story did encompass more than a chapter, the
central plot-line of the story would tend to be accentuated in the pictures.

In books within the K,L,M band, readers need to do much more work in order to
determine importance enough to discern what they should be carrying as they progress
through the book. The books will not usually contain episodic chapters so readers will
need to carry the content from one chapter to the next. The good news is that the chapters
and the episodes will tend to be short and the book’s title and the blurb on the back will
usually provide help weeding out the non-essential content and determining the main
plotline. For example, the title in the book, Harry and the Ant Invasion goes a long way
towards helping readers recognize the central through-line in the story. Unless these
books are organized in episodic ways, there will tend to be just one dominant trajectory.

It is important to help readers determine importance so they see and hold onto the one
through-line. In addition to looking at the title and back-blurb of the book, it helps to
point out to readers that there will be passages that the author has stretched out and told
bit-by-bit (as students will be doing as they revise their narratives to accentuate the heart
of their stories). Readers may also want to notice things that repeat in these books.

A reader who understands a book within this band will not have much trouble with the
question, “What problem does the main character encounter?” and, later, “How does he
or she resolve that problem?” That is—in more complex books, there are many facets to
the problem, and even skilled readers can wrestle a bit over what the one central problem
is, but in these books, the traditional storyline is usually very evident.

Characters Tend to Be Static and Straightforward, and The Character or the Narrator
Usually Overtly Names the Character’s Traits, Though Not Necessarily at the Places
Where the Character’s Actions Illustrate the Trait

The reader of books in this band of difficulty will not have much trouble identifying the
main character’s traits. Usually the main character is one way throughout the story. The
character’s feelings may change, but the traits stay consistent. The character’s traits often
relate to the central problem and/or the solution. In Harry and the Ant Invasion, Harry
likes creepy things. When the class gets ants, the teacher asks, ‘Would you like to be the
ant monitor?’ The plot line and the character’s traits coalesce.

Especially as they reach the higher-edge of this band, readers will find that often a

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character wants something that is a concrete and external manifestation of a deeper want,
and the story is resolved not by the character getting that specific thing, but by instead
finding another way to address his or her yearnings. Koala Lou wants to win the gum tree
climbing contest because she believes this is how to win back her mother’s affection. She
loses the contest, but even so, is reassured of mother’s unconditional love. Her mother
comforts her, saying, ‘Koala Lou, I do love you. I always have and I always will.”

In The Paint Brush Kid, children decide to paint murals on the house of an older man in
order to persuade the powers that be, not to build a highway where this man’s house
stands, demolishing it. The highway is built despite the kids’ protests… but meanwhile,
the house is moved to a new location and the man finds something else that he was also
craving a family.

Dealing with Difficulty: Tricky Words and Syntax

Readers of these books will need to deal with tricky words. There will be many more
multi-syllable words. While a few randomly selected G/I books averaged 11 two syllable
words and 2 three syllable words, and equal number of randomly selected K books had
26 two-syllable words and 8 three-syllable words and 2 four-syllable words. Readers of
this band of difficulty will also encounter more words that are not in their spoken
vocabulary, many of which will be related to the central topic of a book. In Grandmas at
the Lake, Pip and Skip row a rowboat, getting caught in the current, drifting away from
shore. Characters in a soccer book will put on cleats and faceguards, taking their
positions. Sentence structure will be more complex.

At the High End of This Band

It is worth noting that The Paint Brush Kid, a level M book, has a subordinate plot that is
not dominant enough that a reader needs to follow it in order to enjoy the story—but it is
there for the discerning reader. The older man has come to the USA to find his son, and
when the house is moved, it is moved next to the home of a young man who says, “Put
your house next to mine and I will be your son.” Again, the man’s central want—to find
his son—is not met, but the deeper need is met. At the higher end of this band of
difficulty, there will be different parts to the problem that characters encounter. Maria’s
problem in My Name is Maria Isabel is overtly that her teacher won’t call her by her real
name, but underneath that is the larger issues of identity and power.

II. N,O,P,Q (Forever Amber Brown to Fudgeamania or Fly Away Home)

Readers Need to Not Only Carry but Also Construct a Through Line, This Time Out of
Increasingly Complex Texts

Teachers would be well advised to read a book that is a solid N book, thinking, “Why
might this book be difficult for readers? What is the new work that readers need to do
with texts in this band of book levels?” I would suggest Forever Amber Brown or Max
Malone Makes a Million.

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We think that above all, the texts themselves are more complex at this level, meaning that
readers need to handle more confusion and to carry much more as they read.

Before now, the reader needed to follow a single storyline of a main character who is one
main way, who encounters one main problem, and comes to one main solution. That is,
if you were to summarize the books before now, you would find that they fit into the
problem-solution narrative frame.

In this band of difficulty, a good reader would not be able to draw straight lines from the
cause of the problem to the problem because there is more than one cause of a problem,
and the problem itself may be multi-dimensional. If a teacher asked the skilled reader of
texts in this band of difficulty, “What’s the central problem in this story?’ the reader
would be wise to stall a bit over the question, and to suggest that there is more than one
problem, or that the problem has different parts of different layers.

These readers will benefit from thinking about why characters do things and about why
events happen, and from providing more than one possible cause for any event, using
terms such as “And also….” And “Another part of this is….” And they might, in similar
ways, benefit from thinking about the main character’s struggles, saying, again, “And
also…” and “But the bigger underlying problem is…” Similarly, these readers will
probably anticipate that the plot line in a story could go one way or another, and will see
that characters and events mentioned earlier may well return to supply the next turn in the
story (something which becomes more important in the next band-of-difficulty).

Characters Tend to Be Complicated, Often Demonstrating Ambivalence. The Protagonist

is Apt to Change. The Character’s Traits and Changes are Addressed Explicitly, Though
Readers Need to Carry These Explanations.

In this band of levels, not only the plot but also the main character will be more complex.
Amber Brown, for example, struggles because she is partly 13, and partly 9. Her mother
sometimes wants her to act like a teenager, and sometimes, like a child. Then there is the
mother’s divorce, and Amber has complex feelings about it as well. She misses her Dad,
and she is ambivalent over the fact that she is starting to like her Mom’s new boyfriend.

Although books—and within them, characters and plot lines—at this level are
significantly more complex than those in the K,L,M band, the character will come right
out and tell readers how he or she feels, what he or she is like. Then later in the book, the
character will act in certain ways and it will be up to the reader to supply the label for
what that action reveals… but usually that label will have been provided earlier by the
character or the narrator. So yes, characters will be complex—but readers will be told
about this complexity. It will not be subtle.

Readers at this level will benefit from being nudged to think about characters in complex
ways (as not just being one-way, as being ambivalent, as sometimes acting out of
character in ways that reveal either their ambivalence or their changes)

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Dealing with Difficulty: Tricky Passages and Figurative Language

Whereas prior to now, readers will have dealt with tricky words, now they’ll also be
asked to deal with tricky passages. Above all, they’ll encounter many instances of
figurative language. For example, in Forever Amber Brown, the mother’s boyfriend,
Max, and Amber both like to bowl. But in a section of the text where bowling is not the
subject, readers will learn that Amber thinks that the probability of her father returning is
like the probability of her bowling 300… and readers are meant to realize this section is
not actually about bowling! That is, the work readers will have done at earlier levels to
determine importance will prevent them for being derailed by instances of figurative
language that could otherwise cause major confusion.

III. R,S,T (Charlotte’s Web or Stuart Little to Bridge to Teribithia)

Readers Need to Not Only Carry but Also Construct a Through Line, This Time Out of
Increasingly Complex Texts

In the preceding band of text-levels, there were very often several forces contributing to
the unfolding plot line. This is exacerbated at this level, especially because seemingly
minor characters may well end up as important to the plot line. This means that readers
need to hold minor characters and subordinate plots in mind. Children’s predictions, for
example, might include the expectation that a character who made a somewhat fleeting
appearance or a plot-line that seemed unrelated to the main story line could return,
playing a more important role than might have been expected. Of course, other minor
characters and subordinate plot lines will end up to be just as insignificant as they at first
seem to be.

It is especially notable that at this level of text difficulty, readers need to follow not only
the evolving plot line, but also the evolving setting. The setting becomes a force in the
story, influencing characters and the plot just as, say, an antagonist might. In historical
fiction, for example, readers need to construct a timeline of historical events as well as a
timeline of the protagonist’s main events, and more than that, to see the two timelines
intersect. An event happens in the world, and that event becomes part of the chain of
cause and effect that motors the story’s plot. In most well-written novels within this band
of difficulty, the setting itself undergoes changes. Bridge to Terabithia, for example,
changes at the end, when it belongs not only to Jess and Leslie, but also to Jess’s little
sister. Settings undergo changes also because characters come to feel differently about
them. For example, in Because of Winn Dixie, Opal comes to feel as if her new town is
now home.

This is to say, then, that readers of books in this band of text-difficulties need to carry and
cumulate information not only about minor as well as major characters and about both the
plot and sub-plots, but also about the setting. Some lists of characteristics for texts at
these levels suggest that readers can expect to encounter unfamiliar themes and places—
we believe the point is not so much that places will be unfamiliar as that readers are

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expected to gather more detail about the place, to learn about the place, the issue, the time
as they read. It is helpful, therefore, to encourage these readers to continue adding to their
knowledge of the setting. Especially because the settings are often symbolic and meant
to convey themes or emotions, it helps especially to ask readers to pay attention to the
tone of the setting, to what the setting feels like to them and to the characters, and to do
this trying to let the setting add up to something. Readers will want to ask themselves,
“Why is the story placed in this setting? What do the details in the setting show about the
characters?”

In general, episodes in books at these levels unfold over much more time. In War with
Grandpa, the characters agree to work out a settlement—but that process encompasses
five and a half chapters.

Readers Need to Come to Understand Complex Characters

In books within this band of difficulty, characters continue to be complex, and now their
character traits are often not explicitly stated. Readers need to infer these from their
actions.

Often in books at this level, readers may realize something about a character that the
character does not know about himself or herself. Also at this level, a character’s changes
are often left for the reader to infer (whereas in the earlier band, the character’s inner
thinking essentially told the reader those changes).

When thinking about how characters tend to be handled differently in R/S/T books, or
U/V books, it is helpful to keep in mind that books within these bands were written for
older readers. Think about how an adolescent’s ideas about people are different than
those of a young child, and this will give you some ideas for how the characters will be
handled differently. Not surprisingly, there will be fewer characters who are all-good or
all-bad and more characters that are ‘grey.’ Motives, too, will be more complicated, and
values, for the reader as well as many of the protagonists will challenge old norms and
inherited values. Then, too, relationships will become more complex. A parent does not
simply love the child in a simple, no-strings sort of way. That love may be encumbered
with expectations, layered with conditions. Whereas for the young child, things happen in
relationships for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, the teenager feels a need to
understand why, even if this means digging into dark terrain. The young people in these
books will tend to be active agents, sometimes feigning more authority than is
reasonable.

At his band of book levels, readers will profit tremendously from rereading a favorite
book, this time noticing how everything in the book has significance. That the author has
done things on purpose, that often something that bears meaning later on in the story is
easy to first overlook. The message—“Pay attention to details—they matter more than
you think to the overall message of this book” becomes an important one.

Tricky Passages and Also Confusing Chapters

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Readers of books within this band of difficulty will need to anticipate that they’ll
encounter not just tricky words and tricky passages (including figurative language) but
also tricky chapters. It is entirely likely, for example, that these books will start off
feeling confusing—
think, for example, of Edward’s Eyes, whose first chapter chronicles the book’s final
event. Readers need to be taught, “Before, if things were confusing, you were taught to
give up on the book—but now you’ll find that books are often written in such a way that
readers are supposed to be confused, and to carry that sense of, ‘Huh?’ with you as you
continue reading. Oftentimes the confusion may not be clear for a number of chapters.
Readers will find it helpful if they realize that authors have done things on purpose. If a
character is introduced and then disappears, readers will be wise to think, “What role did
that character play? Might he or she return later, in some way that is important?”

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