About HIGH INTEREST PUBLISHING

High Interest Publishing (HIP Books) publishes novels that are written, edited and designed for struggling and reluctant readers from age 8 to 18. The company also offers print and online teacher resources to help educators teach reading strategies, boost comprehension and improve students’ general reading skills.

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The company was cofounded in 2002 by Terry Durkin and Paul Kropp, one of North America’s leading authors of young-adult fiction and a foremost authority on high interest-low vocabulary reading materials. Paul had a vision that putting the right books in students’ hands could turn many struggling readers into confident and competent readers. He applied his thirty years of experience as a teacher, editor and writer to creating the very best books on the market for reluctant readers. Over the years, Paul and Terry had many opportunities to expand HIP Books into other areas but they chose to focus on this reading audience that few other publishers paid attention to.  Paul died in August 2015, but his vision and his mission live on in High Interest Publishing.

HIP novels are written by accomplished YA authors, then carefully edited to ensure accessible reading levels for struggling and reluctant readers. Several different readability formulas are applied to ensure that every page is at a consistent reading level. As well, HIP provides Lexile™ levels and has Accelerated Reader™ quizzes for most novels. You can read more about HIP’s rigorous editorial process and what makes HIP books the very best books for struggling readers.  In spite of these controls, HIP’s first priority is to provide engaging stories, realistic characters and plot lines, and flowing prose.

Today, High Interest Publishing produces eight series of novels for reluctant readers:

  • HIP SR20 award-winning high-interest, low vocabulary novels for students in Grades 4-12, reading at Grade 3-4 reading level.
  • HIP JR: 12 exciting novels geared to elementary school students in Grades 3-7, reading at Grade 2-3 level.
  • HIP HI-SCHOOL: books geared especially to senior high school students, featuring exciting stories of teenage characters dealing with issues from gang violence to teen pregnancy, written at mid-grade 3 level. (Some titles available in both print and ebook formats)
  • HIP Xtreme: high-action tales of young heroes struggling to survive against the elements, such as blizzards, earthquakes and tsunamis (available in both print and ebook formats)
  • HIP Fantasy: two sets of three titles – one about rescuing the earth’s last dragons and the other about “skinwalkers” who can shapeshift between human and animal – each of which functions as a series or stand-alone novels
  • BATS Mysteries: a series of six novels that take upper elementary readers from the first day of school to the last with a couple of junior detectives who call themselves “The Bat Gang.”
  • HIP QuickRead: shorter adaptations of some HIP JR titles, designed for younger readers who lack the reading stamina for longer novels.The Crash - Teacher's Guide

HIP Professional materials offer support for teachers working with students at all levels of reading ability. Every novel is accompanied by its own Teacher’s Guide, written by international literacy expert and former International Reading Association Board Member Lori Jamison (Rog). These guides include discussion points for higher-level thinking, graphic organizers for written responses and after-reading suggestions to extend and enrich students’ experience with the novel. As well, the HIP Reading Assessment contains a set of graded reading passages for use in determining student strengths and needs. HIP Readers’ Theater Plays offers a package of scripts excerpted from HIP novels, along with teaching ideas to support this excellent fluency-building tool.

High Interest Publishing is incorporated in both Canada and the United States. Both companies have a simple mission: to produce high-quality books that build confidence and competence in struggling readers.

HIP books are shipped around the world. For information about purchasing HIP books outside of North America, click here.

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