Lexile scores and juvenile and young adult readers

[Lissa Vincent]

Hi! 

Found your site googling "pandora for books".  Project looks exciting and I hope that your "Readers Project" kicks off soon.

One suggestion that I don't see in your forums is to make use of Lexile scores in your ratings/search parameters. http://lexile.com/ describes how books are rated for reading level using this system. Students across the US take an electronic test a few times a year to measure their reading level and are provided with that information to help them choose "just right" books. This is an improvement over the current age/grade level organization generally used, but there is still a need to improve finding books the suite the interests of young readers.

The particular challenge that I have right now is finding appropriate books for my 4th grade, 9 year old son, who reads in a lexile range of 850-1050 (8th grade level). Books in his age group section are too easy - he breezes through them in less than an hour. Books in young adult are generally not topics he is interested in. Lexile.com doesn't offer much in the way of narrowing its suggestions beyond genre. I'm relying mostly on word-of-mouth (which has been most successful so far.  )

It seems that Booklamp will provide the ability to find books with a similar "feel" to a known book, but I hope you can include some additional parent friendly features like lexile scores and toggles/sliders on sex/violence/language ( like http://www.kids-in-mind.com/ ).

Thanks and looking forward to the next phase!
-lissa

[Daniel Bowen]

Those sort of standardized measures are certainly a thought has been tossed around here at BookLamp.  Amazon has begun to provide similar measures for some books.  They are calling them, "Text Stats."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082901873.html

BookLamp is certainly capable of providing this same information, but something like lexile scores may find its way under "additional functionality."  Much of our development concerns topics that tend to be more difficult to quantify.  Topics, for example, that bode favorably to the flexibility of an entrepreneurial venture - i.e., Amazon can implement lexile scores for their books just as easily as we can.  What Amazon can't do is what we are currently working on.

Don't count it out though.  I understand where you're coming from, and we are here to find a way to help everyone find the books that fit their tastes.

What's interesting about our current path of development is that the concept of lexile scores may be taken account of - from a different perspective - in our current development.  So far our system though, won't be limited to various grade levels and such.  We will see what ultimately develops.

Thanks for the post Lissa,
Dan