I'm glad you had teachers like that. Not sure why mine were so dead-set on only reading in your grade level. Limiting lower level makes more sense, to encourage students to push themselves more. 6th grade was the last grade in the school, so the only people allowed to read the 7th grade level books were in the 6th grade Honors English class. It's not like the library would run out of books if all 6th graders were allowed to pick out of that section of the library