^^^just a followup: i plugged the judy blume books above into the scholastic book wizard site referenced below and it spit back a grade-equivalent reading level of about 4.5 (on average). the
molly moon books and the city of ember were tagged at a higher grade-equivalent level of about 5.5. interestingly, my dc read the "harder" books on her teacher's recommendation in 2nd grade, but now in 3rd, ...