Silas Marner? Hahahah I think not

I don't know what my reading level was in the fourth grade. I think that was the year that we had color coded reading books. There were three or four colors that represented advancing grade levels in the books. We would read a selection, take a quiz, and then read the next, advancing at our own pace. I finished the entire series pretty early on. I think that by the time we came back from the Christmas break the teacher was sending me to the library to help out there during the reading exercise.

In the fifth grade we took an achievement test and my reading level was measured as being in the twelfth grade; in arithmetic I was only performing at the ninth grade level. Then the teacher explained to my mother that he had been grossly mistaken. He thought I had been a trouble maker in class because I was frustrated over not being able to understand the material he was covering. The achievement test, along with a couple of other events convinced him that I was a trouble maker because I was bored.

I am sure that there were students in 1939 to 1941 that were in the same or similar position. I don't think that I've ever read Silas Marner, though the story seems familiar. I have probably seen it at least once in a teleplay. I am sure that the vocabulary would be well within the range of a fourth grader who is reading at grade level. The challenge would be in keeping a modern fourth grader involved in the story and motivated to read the entire novel.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.

When I was in elementary school in the early 1960s we read classics, and the school library contained real, full-length books, some without pictures! I visited an elementary school library recently and was surprised to see that almost all of the inventory consisted of "kiddie" books, the kind that are about a quarter-inch thick, with large print and lots of pictures. High school students I know don't read classics or modern adult novels in school. Instead, they read special "young people's" fiction in which the protagonists are always teenagers. If they read for recreation, it's mostly fantasy stuff like Harry Potter.

I met a girl in the 4th grade at work who said she read a book about the great depression and that's just as hardcore a subject as Silas Marner. I've not read that but I did watch the Steve Martin movie A Simple Twist of Fate which is based off it. If the book is anything like that movie where a woman does Heroin and a politician leaves a child he had through wedlock, I agree that it definitely isn't an apporopriate book for 4th graders. Inappropriate books at a young age isn't that uncommon a thing. When I was in 5th grade back in 1997, my teacher had us read a book where one of the scenes in it involved a teenage girl imagining what it would be like if a boy her age was rubbing her leg in a sexual way. For those curious about it, it was called the Broccoli Tapes. It's only available new in hardback on amazon for some reason.

it's not that hard a book to read.

Yeah, that was so wrong. Even if a child could read that book the story wouldn't hold their interest. I read it as an adult due to this movie and it is a very good book for people over 35 or so.

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