What Do Children Read?

[Xenocrates]

By Jay Mathews, Washington Post Staff Writer

Children have welcomed the Harry Potter books in recent years like free ice cream in the cafeteria, but the largest survey ever of youthful reading in the United States will reveal today that none of J.K. Rowling's phenomenally popular books has been able to dislodge the works of longtime favorites Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton and Harper Lee as the most read.

(snip)

The survey, at http://www.renlearn.com/whatkidsarereading, breaks down results by sex and section of the country. Overall, Dr. Seuss's madly rhyming "Green Eggs and Ham" was the most popular first-grade book. Second-graders preferred Numeroff's "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," which Donovan praised for its humorous take on cause and effect. White's timeless tale of a girl, a pig and a spider, "Charlotte's Web," was the third-grade favorite. Blume, not surprisingly, won over fourth-graders with her "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing," the first of several books about Peter Warren Hatcher, who prefers to be called "Fudge."

Fifth-graders read most often Paterson's story of two children and a magical forest kingdom, "Bridge to Terabithia." Sixth-graders preferred "Hatchet," about a boy stranded in the wilderness, by Paulsen, whom Donovan called "Jack London for kids." The most-read book among seventh- and eighth-graders was "The Outsiders," a story of rival gangs in Tucson published in 1967 when its author, Hinton, was 18 years old.

Article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/05/04/ST2008050402168.html?hpid=topnews

[fight4my3sons]

1. interesting, thanks!