Cradling a small stack of books in the crook of her arm, Kalynne Corson's eyes scanned the remaining titles on the shelf looking for another good read.
It was just another trip to the library for the 12-year-old Kirtland resident and her mother, Christie.
"We normally go to the Kirtland library," Kalynne Corson said as she scoped out the young adult section at Mentor Public Library. "They know us by name there."
A quick reader, she says she can get through a book in two or three days and usually reads every day.
"It'd be more of a punishment to take a book away from her than grounding," Christie Corson said of her daughter's reading.
According to a national study, Kalynne's attitude toward reading isn't an anomaly. Children her age through high school are reading more.
One caveat, however, is that some of the results seem to indicate student readers might stick to favorite young adult authors and novels and forgo more difficult titles as they age.
The study "What Kids Are Reading: The Book-Reading Habits of Students in American Schools," which has been published for the past five years, ranks the books students are reading.
The 2013 edition, which examines the 2011-12 school year, involved 8.6 million students in grades 1-12 from 27,240 schools across the nation.
That sample group read more than 283 million books, which includes assigned and pleasure reading.
Conducted by Renaissance Learning Inc., a technology-based educational company, the study found three overall trends: the influence of pop culture on reading, the dropping of text complexity as high school reading requirements evolve, and the early impact of Common Core State Standards.
In regards to assigned reading, specifically at the high school level, the study stated caution should be exercised when making inferences about the apparent drop in text complexity for assigned reading, because over time different surveys with different methodologies and student populations were used. The 2013 study looked at reading evaluations from 1907 to 2012.
"Complexity is impacted in part by average sentence length; books with longer sentences tend to be more difficult to comprehend than books with shorter sentences," according to the study.
Decline in complexity might be a concern, but language evolves over time and as the study points out, there is evidence that writing has become less complex and more streamlined.
An example of this would be comparing the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Ernest Hemingway, both considered great American authors but with very different styles.
Cailey Williams, adult information services librarian for Mentor Public Library, said librarians have heard of the reading level concerns but they don't place too much weight on them.
"We like to think reading is reading," she said. "Reading leads to reading. In our profession, we don't judge what people read. Things that are popular are popular, and it's not our job to judge what they're reading, just to provide it."
As part of her job, Williams oversees the book ordering for the library's young adult section. In terms of reading level, the books found in the young adult or teen department span grades six through 12.
"There are going to be books in that section that are going to be a much lower reading level (than others) and books in that section that are bordering on adult content," she said. "A lot of teen books strive to teach lessons or there's some sort of moral or they're exploring something that's in society. There are going to books that have drugs. There are going to be books that have sex. There's going to be books that have abuse."
Mentor High School senior Suzana Misko, 17, said she usually enjoys the books she picks to read for pleasure more than the required reading for school.
"I can choose the genre I want to rather than the school picking it," she said. "(To find books) I look at the Barnes and Noble website and the titles they recommend. I also go on the author's website. I like to do a full background on books because I'm picky with what I read."
Misko, who works as a book shelver at Mentor Public Library, said school-required books she really enjoyed include "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Great Gatsby."
When it comes to assigned reading by schools, the books selected for each grade level must meet state standards, said Tracy Coleman, and English teacher at Mentor High, who teaches senior college prep English and 11th grade honors English.
"There's a specific measure of text complexity that we have to include," she said. "We want to have a balance between canonical texts students need to be considered well-rounded. These are books that have been read for a long time and are part of curriculum at every school. Colleges have the expectation that students have backgrounds with some texts."
In addition to ensuring students have a knowledge of classic school-assigned books, teachers have seen a push in core standards to include newer authors and more nonfiction books to be included in assigned reading.
"There's being a literate adult where you can speak to books everyone had read, and then there's being a literary adult where you're exposed to a wide range of books," Coleman said. "I absolutely love everything that we get to teach. I like exposing the students to all of the texts from nonfiction works like 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell, which is more recent, all the way to 'Lord of the Flies' and 'Brave New World.' "
Book characters are usually written two years older than the actual reading age level of the book, Williams said. The popular "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" book series features characters in sixth grade, but is intended for readers in the third and fourth grades.
"The books that are written for eighth-graders will have characters in them that are 16. I think that once we get higher and higher, there's a stopping point," she added. "You can't really go beyond 18 in most of the young adult section. So it's kind of like you hit that wall and either you go to adult books or continue reading at the same level."
But Williams makes it clear the library isn't intended to police reading level.
"We try not to make it such a big deal that one (book) is in one section and one is in another. If you look at our displays we frequently mix the young adult and adult book picks," she said. "We encourage it both ways. We encourage adults to read young adult books and young adults to read adult books. The location doesn't mean that the quality is different."
For Christie Corson, Kalynne's mom, she thinks it's great that children still enjoy reading despite having an abundance of electronic distractions.
As with most readers, Kalynne enjoys the retreat a good story provides.
"I like the part where you're able to read and imagine the scenery that's there and the adventures. I like where you can leave this world and go into another one," she said.