(no subject)

[the_rck]

evalerie has had to loan us a car again. Scott got home about 5:30 last night with the further news that it will be Friday before the dealership has a replacement tire for us. Driving on the spare is a really bad idea as it’s only supposed to be safe for about forty miles. Scott was more than a little panicked at the idea of trying to get back and forth to work twice on the dratted thing (after getting home on it once already). We’re really, really fortunate to have evalerie around.

Cordelia complained last night, right at bedtime, that she has a school assignment problem— She needs to find a book to read that’s at her reading level by tomorrow. All of the books she’s got from the library are rated as too easy by the company who does this system. This thing is called 'lexile levels.' Most YA stuff is 700th to 800th lexile. Cordelia is supposed find a book at 1350. When I went to the official site, all the stuff at her level was very clearly aimed at adults. When I filtered by the age for which things were appropriate, I got absolutely no books at all. The closest thing I saw on the list to something that might be appropriate for Cordelia was The Scarlet Letter, and, well, no. She’s twelve.

I suspect that the big problem is that the company has only rated a few thousand books and has focused heavily on stuff at lexiles that kids are more likely to read. I think, too, that they may only rate things that publishers and/or schools specifically ask them to or that they know are popular.

I emailed her teacher, and I put in a reference request with the local public library. The teacher got back to me this morning. She said that anything between 1000-1400 would be fine, so I went back in. I narrowed the search by length (over 108 pages) and by age (10-13). I didn’t try to limit by genre/subject because I knew there’d be too few options for that. I got very frustrated because there were books that turned up three, four, even five times within a particular lexile, not even different editions of the book— the same exact book.

I turned up 120 books between 1000 and 1370. Most of them were at the low end of the scale. The local library only has a few of these, and those are almost all non-fiction, cataloged for adults, or part of a series without being the first book in the series. Cordelia very much doesn’t want to read non-fiction, but I think she’s going to have to. She also says she must have this book by tomorrow morning which… Yeah. I suppose Scott can take her to the library tonight if we absolutely have to; he’s not going to be thrilled to do it, though.

There were two authors who looked promising, Karen McCombie and Mary Hooper, but the library doesn’t have any of their listed books, so I guess they’re not options. We don’t have time for interlibrary loan (and the state ILL system is going down some time this month for a couple of weeks. I’m not sure when) or for special ordering a book. I suppose I could call and ask Book Bound and Barnes & Noble if they have any of the specific books. I just very much don’t want to have to.

The library just got back to me. I’m not sure that any of their suggestions are things that the lexile people have actually rated. I’m not sure Cordelia’s prepared for Persuasion (that has always struck me as an Austen book that isn’t really comprehensible until a person is well past adolescence). I have asked the teacher if Northanger Abbey or Emma might be acceptable. Code Name Verity and A Clockwork Orange may be too dark for her. I hated The Great Gatsby and Gulliver’s Travels when I read them in high school, so I wouldn’t really expect Cordelia to love them now. I think Cordelia would love Spindle’s End, but I’m not sure she’ll read it given that we own a copy.

I know nothing about The Book Thief, The Midwife’s Apprentice, or The Spies of Mississippi, so I have no comment on them. The only other specific suggestion is Little Women which… I don’t know. Maybe she’d like it. She thought Anne of Green Gables was horrifically boring, though, so I’m dubious.

Cordelia’s tastes run to YA dystopia, YA fantasy, and YA science fiction. She’ll also read some humorous books aimed at her age group that are about the trials and tribulations of middle school or high school students.

I have three more appointments covered by ACS volunteer drivers. I’m glad of that, but I’m also kind of tired of juggling it all and tempted to tell them that I’m covered all the way through, what with my friends and family. It’s just that taking me in is a fair sized bite out of the middle of someone’s day. I do have someone to drive for every single remaining appointment whether the ACS finds someone or not.

I’m trying to make lists of foods our family can’t have or doesn’t like and of foods we actually do know we like. evalerie has offered to coordinate volunteers to try to help us with dinners until I’m recovered. Making the lists is hard because there are so many fiddly things that we need to avoid and because there are a lot of foods that two of the three of us like a lot but that the third person (almost always Cordelia) won’t touch.