A lexile is a reading level determined by examining the difficulty of text based on vocabulary and sentence structure. (Most text fall between 200 and 1800.)
The lexile can only tell you about the comparative difficulty of the sentence structure and the level of vocabulary. A lexile does not give any information about the age appropriateness of the text. Because of this, close attention should be paid to content when selecting books for children. For example, the adult book, The Firm written by John Grisham, and the children's book, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, both have a lexile of 680.
