• NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Those kids are at MOST in 3rd grade.

    Here are the approximate word counts for each book in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling:

    Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: ~77,000 words
    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: ~85,000 words
    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: ~107,000 words
    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: ~190,000 words
    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: ~257,000 words
    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: ~168,000 words
    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: ~198,000 words
    

    In total, the series contains around 1,082,000 words across all seven books.

    They would have had to read the entire Harry Potter series. They would have read “War and Peace” twice. They would have read about 80 Capt. Underpants books. They would have had to read about 50 Goosebumps books. A book for a 3rd grader typically consists of about 20,000 words, so in 10.5 months (school year) they would have to read almost 5 chapter books a month. Impressive at that age.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      It’s definitely an achievement but like all millionaires there’s some “cheating” going on: a lot of those words are repeats! Open any book at random and count how many "the"s there are on the two pages!

      ;-)

      (By the way, if you have a pre-reading toddler, reading a storybook aloud with your finger under the words and stopping to let them read all the "the"s is an empowering way to start.)

    • ggppjj@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I was an avid reader as a kid, and took the Accelerated Reader tests almost religiously.

      I switched school systems one year and jammed out all the tests I could remember.

      Got an award at the end of the year. A neat little blue engraved plaque. Not sure where it ended up.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      2 months ago

      I was clearing 3 Goosebumps books a week at that age (Until I ran through them all and switched to the Redwall series). I didn’t have the internet back then though and had to share the TV and game consoles with my brother so there were less distractions. Good job to the kids.