Yeah, “Georgia” has gone through the 4th book (#40) in the fourth box of the Magic Tree House series, with a dozen book to each box.  I estimate that the number of characters in the fourth box (book #37-48) is about twice that of the books from the first box.  She finished reading book #40 within the 15-20 minutes that I previously predicted, or 18 minutes to be exact.   By my rough estimation after counting the number of characters on a couple of typical pages, that would be about 1,000 characters a minute.  If not for the fact that she scores 98% in her reading comprehension exercises consistently despite doing it fast, I would have said that she was faking it.  Though there are online English quizzes for these books, that may put undue stress on her.  The point is to encourage reading at this point, not to discourage them.  That’s what the reading comprehension exercises are for and she’s got that down pat.

I think she really can read short novels without zhuyin these days just fine.  Yesterday, she started studying the the first chapter of third-grade second-semester textbook from Taiwan.  After looking over the text once, she read it aloud decently well (say, 70%).  She simply may not have the patience to read novels yet.  I may need to remind her that her next trip to Orlando rests on reaching this next target, LOL.