Stories for ages nine to twelve

How a chapter is written

Description that does work rather than filling space, characters who want different things, and a chapter that ends somewhere the next one has to pick up.

Chapters run to between 400 and 600 words, which is roughly six to eight minutes read aloud.

Whether it is the right one

These are reading levels with ages on them rather than the other way round. Pick the one that matches how your child reads today, not the one that matches their birthday. Nothing on the page says which band a story is in, so there is nothing to be self conscious about.

The band is fixed once a story starts, because a book that changes reading level halfway through stops working. Start the next one in a different band whenever it is time.

The other two

• Ages 3-5

  Short chapters, simple sentences and a lot of repetition, for a child who is being read to rather than reading.

• Ages 6-8

  Longer chapters with a proper plot, for a child reading along or starting to read alone.