~ borrowed from the Library

DK's THE ADVENTURES OF HAN SOLO is at the beginning 4th Grade reading level.

Like many DK Readers about Star Wars, this book features a lot of great photos. What I don't understand is why the language always sounds so stilted. Many popular Young Adult books are at the 4th grade reading level --TWILIGHT is at the 4th grade reading level -- so why can't these DK books for elementary aged kids read better than they do?!?

Well, regardless it won't matter to most kids that the language is so stiff because the book is about a favorite franchise and characters.

There's actually a lot of fun information in this book. Info about the Millennium Falcon, Chewie, and Han and the gang. Children will read, for example, about how Shyriiwook is the language Wookiees and Han speak. Han knows this language because he was raised by a Wookiee called Dewlanna.

The book mixes in some exciting elements by reminding children of incidents from the movies and books. Here's some sample text from a page:

Oh no -- it's Jabba the Hutt!
Jabba is a powerful crime lord.
Han used to smuggle for Jabba.
On one trip Han lost Jabba's
cargo and Jabba wasn't happy!

STAR WARS in general and these DK books can be great motivators to get kids to sit down and read. And they are books children frequently read more than once. They also have the advantage of being at most libraries.

**Teachers should note that there is an Accelerated Reader test available for this book. ( )

My son, a beginning reader (although becoming more fluent by the day) got this at the library after watching the first couple of star wars movies at home. The movies have many characters to keep track of, and at times a fairly complicated story line that may be a little hard to comprehend for a young child at first. My kid was therefore thrilled to get his hands on this book, to read multiple times at home with ample time to ask questions about details that had escaped him while watching the movie or to clarify questions that he'd been pondering since the film. And he was also happy to be able confirm his understanding of other details of the story's plot and to reinforce the things that he got right. If you're a parent, but non Star Wars amateur, you may also not mind browsing over these readers to get your facts. Although my kid's been reading for a while, I've rarely seen him so motivated reading a book all by himself as he was with this one. And we will naturally be looking for as many from this series as we can find. ( )