Quote Originally Posted by starrysky
I love "The Hobbit." I now have it in English and I've also got a radio production of it - with music, actors and everything. It's great! And I have to say, rockzmom, your daughter is lucky. I don't know whether it's the teacher or your school system in general but there's no way Russian children could read something like this at age 13 in school - it would be considered too childish or something. Poor guys have to read some really boring stuff. Well, not all of it is boring, but some things could be exchanged for something more interesting. We studied "Crime and Punishment" in the 9th grade, at 14 years old. I did get it, actually, it's not that difficult for that age.
starrysky, you brought up a really good question and you may have answered for me WHY it is "you" Russians have such a wonderful vocabulary and wordsmith so well!

So, let me answer your question about why it is the teacher might have selected this book. For our school district, the teachers have a list of books they may select from and then there are certain books which each child must read as well. Each book is assigned a Lexile score as to how difficult the reading material is and each child has a Lexile reading score range that is update during the school year as they are tested 3 times a year. The school tries to group the children in classes by that Lexile score so when the teacher selects a book, they will ALL be able to read that book and be able to understand/comprehend it.

"The Hobbit" had a Lexile score of 1000. My daughter's class had already read "The Pearl" from that list which had a score of 1010. In that category ("Journeys") at around that Lexile level of 1000, were "Thunder Rolling in the Mountain," "I Heard the Owl Call My Name" & "Pedro’s Journal." So I am guessing the teacher thought the kids would enjoy "The Hobbit" more or it might have been a case of this was the book they had the most copies of!

Here are the links of the list of approved books by grade if you want to look:
8th grade
9th grade note all students must read Romeo and Juliet
10th grade
11th grade
12th grade