Have you ever considered writing to a specific audience outside of the norm? An author can sit down and write for a specific genre (i.e. science fiction, fantasy, and general fiction), age group and topic. What about writing for those kids who are reluctant readers? Kids, who have trouble reading at their level, but want to learn about topics for their level and specific to their age group.
Books for reluctant readers have been dubbed by publishers as high-interest, low-reading-level, or hi-lo books. They are written not only for the middle-grader who has trouble reading at a first-grade level, but also for ESL students and adults, or university students with learning disabilities.
Hi-lo books are written for the reluctant reader.
Readers who have trouble reading may declare that they hate reading, simply because there are not many book choices out there that meet their high interest in a subject, but don’t address their low vocabulary reading skills. However, over the last ten years, more publishers have met this demand and are publishing hi-lo books. The population continues to have a growing number of challenged and reluctant readers.
A hi-lo book is written with content that interests the struggling reader who is older than the reading level the text is written for. The hi-lo books are edited to a reading level that is usually at least two grades below the interest level of the reader.
When writing for reluctant readers, think of topics, determine a plot and select characters that match or exceed the reader’s age and interest level. A student in grade eight wants to read about what grade eight and older grade kids are up to. But, the text they need to read has to be at a grade six level for them to comprehend the story. It poses a challenge to the author, as sentence length and narrating simple concepts are important. Dialogue plays an important part, as it helps to break up text, especially if it’s short and to the point.
An interesting thing to note with school-appropriate hi-lo books is that most of the books have male protagonists simply because it is mostly boys who are the majority of reluctant readers. In this case, hi-lo books will be about subjects that interest boys, such as nonfiction, disaster series, sports stories and adventure stories. Teachers make good authors of hi-lo books, simply because of their experience with students who have reading challenges.
If you think you would like the challenge of writing hi-lo books, do some research to find out about the technical writing requirements of high-interest, low-reading books. Ultimately, it will be the responsibility of the editor to work with the author in editing the text and using readability formulas as an aid to ensure that the manuscript meets the needs of those readers requiring a hi-lo format.
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