Indeed, our 10 year old didn't start reading independently until she was almost 9, but now goes through a book a week. Our 4 year old and 6 year old are both at the point where they can read common words, and sound out simple phonetically spelled words (and we neglected reading enough to our 4 year old because we had 3 older kids we were dealing with), so the difference innate ability and interest have is huge.