Informational texts, fantasy, realistic fiction, traditional literature (folktales), biographies, mysteries, historical fiction, short stories, chapter books with sequels, genre combinations • Topics that go well beyond readers’ personal experience • Content requiring the reader to take on diverse perspectives (race, language, culture) • Ideas and themes requiring taking a perspective not familiar to the reader • Some more challenging themes (war, the environment) • Multiple characters to know and understand • Characters revealed by what they say, do, think, and by what others say or think about them • Extensive use of descriptive and figurative language that is key to understanding the plot • Building suspense through events of the plot • Some more complex fantasy elements • Many complex content‐specific words in nonfiction, mostly defined in text, illustrations, or glossary • Multisyllable proper nouns that are challenging to take apart or decode • More difficult layout of informational text, and some fiction text, with denser format

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