Creating Accelerated Reader book quizzes for Dog Man (and other popular series)

One of the most common questions we hear from educators is, How can we motivate students to read more?

New research published in the latest edition of our What Kids Are Reading report highlights an often overlooked strategy: Encourage students to explore book series. Our data shows that students with a sustained interest in a series:

1. Read more books.
2. Spend nearly twice as much time reading each day.

The good news is that students at all levels are finding series that interest them, from the Biscuit series for beginning readers to the It Ends with Us series for high schoolers. In fact, multiple series appear in every What Kids Are Reading grade-level list.

In this blog, we’ll explore one of the most popular series in the elementary grades—the Dog Man graphic novels by Dav Pilkey—and discuss the process for writing the Accelerated Reader book quiz for the latest Dog Man title.

Motivating student reading: The Dog Man book series by Dav Pilkey

To date, Pilkey has written 12 books in the Dog Man series, which centers on a part-human, part-police-dog superhero who fights crime and battles evil. In the latest installment, Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder (ATOS 2.8), the hero must find a way to save people when a villain unleashes an army of AI robots.

The book was released on March 19. Just six days later, 145 Accelerated Reader users had submitted requests for a book quiz on this new title. At this point, John H., an Accelerated Reader content designer, began writing the Reading Practice quiz.

If you’re not currently using Accelerated Reader, you may be surprised to hear that we create quizzes for graphic novels. In fact, Accelerated Reader supports a wide range of reading options for students—more than 220,000 titles and counting. Further, educators agree that reading graphic novels is beneficial to students, given that these novels can:

• Expose students to new vocabulary
• Support students’ visual literacy (i.e., the ability to interpret visual images)
• Help students gain empathy when they are immersed in the story
• Boost students’ overall reading motivation

Q&A with the Accelerated Reader quiz writer for Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder

In the following interview, John gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the life of an Accelerated Reader quiz writer—and explains how Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder helps to engage students in independent reading practice throughout the year.

Q: How does a writer go about choosing a book on which to write an Accelerated Reader quiz?

As quiz writers, we have several ways to determine which titles we choose. For example, we have certain goals each month with regard to how many quizzes we write for books from certain publishers. We also don’t want a title to sit for too long without having a quiz, so generally we’ll select a book that’s been waiting for a couple of weeks instead of one that was just published.

The top priority, however, is always books with a high number of educator requests. When a new book from a popular series like Dog Man is released, students rush to read it, so we want to make sure the Accelerated Reader quiz is available as soon as possible.

Until recently, we would write quizzes throughout the week and then make them available to students on Tuesdays. Now, we can post new quizzes on a daily basis, meaning we were able to write, edit, and post the quiz for Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder in a single day.

Q: What specifically drew you to this new Dog Man title?

My son is a huge Dav Pilkey fan. When he was younger, I’d read books from the Captain Underpants series to him at bedtime. Now that he’s a little older, he’s all about Dog Man. He had just picked up Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder at his school’s book fair a few days earlier, so when the call went out for someone to write the AR quiz, I jumped at the opportunity.

I usually work with electronic copies of books, so getting to borrow my son’s physical copy was a nice experience—he got a real kick out of that!

Q: What draws you to graphic novels more generally? How do graphic novels motivate student reading?

Graphic novels open up new dimensions for storytelling that can’t be found in traditional texts. Visual art has the ability to stick in your mind—for many people, it’s easier to conjure up a mental image than it is to recall a text passage.

It’s also interesting to see how graphic novels have evolved, in a way that’s almost the opposite of what you might expect. Graphic novels first became prominent in the form of stylized memoirs like Maus, or mature takes on comics like Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns.

It’s only in recent years that the graphic novel has become more “kid friendly.” My sister is a school librarian, and she’s one of the many educators who pound the drum of graphic novels being just as valid as traditional texts. I don’t necessarily like to describe graphic novels as a “gateway” to more traditional books, but if these novels get kids engaged in both writing and art, then that’s a win all around.

Q: How did you relate to Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder? Why do you think the series is so popular with students?

Pilkey is a wonderful writer with a lot of heart. He doesn’t talk down to his audience, which I think is why adults like me enjoy his books as well. Plus, he brings up real-world issues—in this case, social division and the rapid expansion of AI—in a way that’s easy for students to digest, while also including lots of humor and, of course, thrilling action scenes. (If you ever check out a Dog Man book from the library, it’s probably going to have a lot of taped up pages in those parts, which I view as a compliment to the artform!)

In this installment, we also get to see how far the character of Petey has come. He started off as a villain, but over the course of the series, we see him soften as he becomes a father and embraces the people around him. There’s also a surprisingly heart-wrenching look into his childhood that I think really highlights the empathetic nature of Pilkey’s books.

Q: What was your process for writing the individual Accelerated Reader quiz questions?

Each AR quiz question is followed by four choices: the correct answer plus three “distractors,” or incorrect answers. As quiz writers, we often spend the bulk of our time coming up with the distractors, which must be clearly incorrect but still plausible in the context of the book. For example, if I were writing a quiz for a realistic novel set during the Revolutionary War, I wouldn’t say that John Adams began casting spells or George Washington grew a pair of wings (interesting as these developments might be!)

The great part about books in the Dog Man series is that the humor and action are so over the top, there’s not much that’s off the table in terms of writing the distractors. I can say that characters got zapped with shrink rays or had their brains swapped, and that’s a perfectly plausible thing that could happen.

It helps that I’m familiar with the series, so I know that it has a lot of elements drawn from comic books and science fiction more generally.

Q: What was the most challenging part of writing this Accelerated Reader quiz?

There’s definitely added pressure when writing an AR quiz that I know is going to be taken by thousands of students right away. Clearly, the quiz needs to be written quickly—we don’t want kids to read the book and then forget everything that happened while they’re waiting for the quiz to be released.

At the same time, the quiz needs to be as perfect as it can be right out of the gate. One thing a lot of people don’t understand is that we’re not trying to “trick” students or make the quizzes as difficult as possible. The thing I keep in the front of my mind whenever I’m writing a quiz is, If I were a student who had just read this book, I should be able to answer every question without issue.

By this logic, the quiz questions need to center on major plot points and memorable events—fortunately, there is no shortage of either one in this title. Another consideration is that—as I mentioned earlier—graphic novels are somewhat different than more traditional texts. For example, keeping track of character names can be a challenge when you’re only seeing them and there’s no “Bob said” or “Ramona asked” tags after lines of dialogue.

It’s not always easy to interpret action in comics either, such as who fired that laser beam or how a character went from riding a horse to suddenly swimming in a river. That’s why it’s so important to always keep the students in mind while writing an AR quiz. If I have a difficult time understanding something, there’s a good chance the students will as well, so I should probably avoid focusing on it in the quiz.

Q: Which students are most likely to enjoy this new Dog Man title?

There aren’t many students I wouldn’t recommend the Dog Man books to. Students who like dogs, students who like cats, students who like super-intelligent fish with psychokinetic powers—there’s something for everyone! There’s humor, action, and a heartfelt lesson.

This is a great foundation for young readers and helpful for educators and librarians as well. If they know a student loves Dog Man, they can have a dozen other book recommendations lined up for what to read next.

Q: Since your AR quiz was released in March, it’s been taken 94,383 times. That’s an average of 865 times per day. What’s your response to this?

Wow! That’s really everything I hope for when writing an Accelerated Reader quiz—that students all over the world are going to discover and enjoy another great book. I work with a wonderful team of people who are dedicated to promoting literacy and a love of reading, so being a part of that is exciting and humbling.

Plus, it’s always fun to embarrass my kids whenever we go to the library or bookstore, and I point out all the books I’ve written AR quizzes for. This is a great one to add to the repertoire.