What is ATOS?

ATOS is the method by which the book’s readability is calculated. It takes into account every word in the book and the difficulty of each of these and, in addition, measures the length of sentences. It is the length and difficulty of the words and sentences that ATOS formulates to calculate a book’s readability and then Book Level.

To make this calculation the entire text of the book is scanned, so the frequency of tricky words is taken into account not just their existence in the text. This is one reason why non-fiction books – even simple ones – often get a higher Book Level than their fiction counterparts: technical terms and their like are more difficult to read.

Why is the Book Level of this picture book the same as an adult novel?

In a nutshell this is because it is possible to write a novel using simple language (no matter what the subject matter) and, conversely, to write a picture book using language with a readability above that typical of the genre.

This seems counter-intuitive at first because we associate a book’s subject matter with how difficult we think it will be to read. But a book can be read without necessarily comprehending its underlying meanings and inferences.

To get round this problem our Reading Practice quizzes have both a readability measure (Book Level) and an age recommendation (Interest Level). This effectively splits the notion of a book’s difficulty so that Book Level is an objective, computer-generated assessment of the mechanical readability of the text while the subjective measure of suitability, measured by Interest Level, gives a guide to the target reader irrespective of how difficult it is too read.

What are the Interest Level bands?

The age guidelines for Interest Levels are:
Lower - five to eight years old, Years 1 to 4, Key Stage 1-2
Middle - nine to thirteen years old, Years 5 to 9, Key Stage 2-3
Upper - fourteen + years old, Years 10 and over, Key Stage 4

We plan to introduce a Middle Plus Interest Level to the three existing ones soon. This will allow us to categorise books which are aimed at older students in the Middle Years band which currently straddles the primary and secondary school gap.

Why does it take so long to quiz a book?

Quizzes go through several stages to make sure that the questions are accurate and that there are no clues to help any student who hasn’t read the book. It generally takes a week for a quizwriter to read a book and write a quiz for a book; sometimes longer for bigger books. After that, the book is read again by another quizwriter who then takes and verifies the quiz, providing notes for the editors. The quiz is then edited with reference to the text to check that it’s factually accurate and that the main plot points are covered. Around half of all quizzes will go back to the quizwriter after this first editing phase for clarification and question rewriting. Following this, we edit the quiz again to check that all changes make sense and that no further error has crept in. There then follows a third editing stage and then a final a check before we make the quiz available to customers. This means that a quiz is seen by five people before it is released.

Why is the ISBN of my book different to the one you have quizzed?

Each new edition of a book has a different ISBN. Typically a discrepancy between your ISBN and ours will be the difference between hard and paperback editions, but any new edition will have a different ISBN.

Very rarely different books have the same name. This is more common in non-fiction. They may even have the same author yet still be different. In this case - or any similar situation - after double checking the details you should check the series, if any, and also the publisher.

Another confusing situation arises when publishers replicate entire series of already published books but with simplified text. So the ISBNs are different but the title and author stay the same and, essentially, so does the plot. Once again, checking the series will indicate that there are two distinct series of books. And while we may keep some of the questions from the original quiz, we go through the process of re-quizzing the newer books to fit the new simplified text.

How come some of your books contain swearing and sex?

Authors sometimes put such things (and other controversial issues) in their books and we don’t refuse to quiz any book based on its content. We do make the controversial nature of such books known by saying as much in the book’s summary, sometimes specifying the nature of it. Details of a book in ARBookfind.co.uk can sometimes show slightly more information about the nature of the controversial matter if you click on the title to expand the book’s topics and sub-topics.

The introduction of a fourth Interest Level, Middle Plus, will soon give an additional place where most of the titles containing such subjects can be categorised, but ultimately we rely on librarians to know their stock and assess suitability accordingly.

Which awards do you quiz?

We quiz the shortlist of the following book awards: British Book awards, Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, Costa Book awards, Guardian Children’s Fiction award, as well as all of the World Book Day books and the Booked-Up awards. Because of our other quizzing priorities we will also quiz a large chunk of the long lists for these awards as well.

How do you choose the books you quiz?

Our quizzing priorities, in no order of importance, are:
awards’ shortlists (varies according to the time of year of the award)
well-known author releases
additions to existing series
customer requests - compiled through our web site
hi-lows - those titles aimed specifically at students who read below their chronological age
Reluctant reader titles – for those who are less than enthusiastic about reading

Why don’t your questions match the book’s text?

Questions are chosen to highlight the main plot points and memorable events in a book, so they always match the text. There are however various reasons why this might appear not to be the case. Occasionally publishers change a book’s text. This might be something trivial like the names, or, much less often, a chunk of the story. They don’t tell anyone they’re doing it though the changed text will usually be in a later edition of the book with a new ISBN. The first we know is when a customer emails to ask why the quiz doesn’t make sense.

Another reason for a mismatch is when we quiz a book comprising several stories and this is subsequently re-published with the same title but containing only one of the stories (often the first story in the compilation). Although both books have the same title they will have different ISBNs.

In both cases, where we are aware of such changes, we make an adjustment to the book’s title to clarify which book is which.

What makes a book non-quizzable?

A quiz writer needs to be able to write at least five questions to construct a quiz, and each question much have three plausible incorrect responses. The main reason why a book is deemed non-quizzable is because there is insufficient text to either allow us to construct the questions or generate adequate incorrect responses. Highly repetitive text or highly predictable storylines often fall foul of this rule.

We also don’t quiz poetry collections (narrative poetry excepted) because such books are rarely used for reading practice and the abstract concepts often found in poetry present problems for our fact-based quizzes.