that regardless of which books are assigned, a good portion of the students will not like them. I cannot remember hardly any of the books that I had to read before High School. The only one I can remember before the 7th grade was Return to Treasure Island. I picked that myself from the library when required to do a book report in the 4th grade. I read next to none of it.

I think it is interesting to note that I came from a family where people were constantly reading. While I was in 5th grade, at age ten, I began reading books on my own. However, even when I reached high school, I seldom finished a book that was assigned reading. I would get maybe half to three-quarters of the way through, and then skim the last couple of chapters so I knew what happened.

I think a number of competing factors play into all this. First, books are selected for students based on an average level of reading ability. For people at or above that level, the reading experience is not all that taxing. As someone who reads fairly slow, though, it is very discouraging to try and maintain the pace required by school. When I was about 11 or 12, I read The Secret Garden on my own. It was age appropriate and quite possibly something that could have been assigned in school. It must have taken me at least two months to read it. Had it been something I had to read for school, I likely never would have finished it because I read too slowly. The school would not have given me as much time as I would need to read it at my pace, and I would have had to sit it aside when the class moved onto something else.

As I got older, the books I had to read for school cut into my personal reading time. You can probably guess which books won that contest. Also, many times, the classics required in school appeal to an older, more mature individual. I don't think anything can be done about that.

Unfortunately, I think education has to walk a delicate line between encouraging people to learn and forcing people to do it. Reading is something that I think people improve at as they do it. Finding ways to encourage kids to take an interest in books is important, but I don't know that there is a method, or different group of books, that can be adopted to appeal to everyone. Each child needs something different, and that is the challenge with setting any kind of standard.