My 1st grader also reads well above grade level and loves reading Dogman books. They are below his reading level but these are the books that got him to voluntarily choose to read on his own, without any prompting from me and outside of designated reading time. He's always been a strong reader but I never saw him CHOOSE to reading as an activity to pass the time (rather than play) until we got these books. I am not about to discourage this by telling him he needs to be reading something else.

We read a wider variety of books together every night and I always choose books for him to read aloud that are a bit above his reading level so that he can continue improving.

Another vote for leave him alone.

In my experience, the best thing is to make the books you want your kids to read be read-aloud books (or, lacking time on your part, a runner-up is to use audiobooks). You can either use a few chapters to get a kid interested in a book, which totally works sometimes, or simply read the more complicated books as read-alouds so that he still gets more complicated stories.

So he reads Dogman 1,000 times while you read Mr. Popper's Penguins, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Henry Huggins, Charlotte's Web, whatever. Sometimes maybe he gets into it and you turn the read-aloud over. Sometimes he just wants you to read, and that's fine. Sometimes Audible reads, and that's fine too.

Anonymous wrote:Let him read whatever he wants.

+100000

Let him read the dog man!

I do understand your concern. Honest. But he's reading! Make it work, and the fun goes away.

my 1st grade girl only wants to read babymouse. fine whatever.

My son read Dogman for years and Capitan Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Those were his "fun" reads. He's in 8th grade now taking Honors English , excellent reader and writer as well!

Let him read whatever he wants.

Don't make this a thing unless you want to incite him to rebel against your reading suggestions. Let his reading be a personal choice just like yours is.

Could you try the Hilo series too? My dogman-loving kid got over dogman when we introduced Hilo...

Sounds like my kids when he was in first grade. He is 10 now and just finished the Harry Potter series so their preferences do change.

Then let him read Dogman until he's tired of it. Particularly under these circumstances, this is not a problem.

(And for what it's worth, you could have been describing my son, who's now branching out.)

Eh, don't stress it. My DS was the same way. In third grade, something clicked and he started reading longer books. It was hard to watch him read picture books well below his actual reading level but it is reading.

13 story treehouse

Stick Dog and Stick Cat

And the Dogman books are good. It's fine if he reads them a million times.

I feel you.

6yr old DS is stuck on rereading dogman books over and over. He is a very strong reader(3rd grade reading level) but he insists other books are not interesting to him. He has read all the bad guys books as well, but dogman is his favorite. He will read magic tree house, A-Z mysteries, flat Stanley etc if I insist but I obviously do not want to force him to read. I feel like he still really wants a book with lots of pictures and is intimated by books that are less visually appealing.