tl;dr: all kids need/deserve both choiceful and choiceless reading, regardless of skill or talent. Parents and teachers can and should assign kids choiceless reading that usefully challenges and/or tests them. But kids also deserve activities and rituals and games that encourage and reward them for choiceful reading, where their choices are not to be questioned.

I'm not sure how to read the question. I think freedom is one of the things that helps make reading attractive, and that stepping back and giving students/kids/whomever freedom in their reading choices can sometimes make even pretty surprising books attractive enough that people pick them up and read them.

But if I'm really committed to giving someone that space and freedom of choice, when they do choose something to read, that freedom includes freedom from the constraint of validation!

There are separate questions about whether or not someone's total literary diet is sufficient for their needs and goals. Parents (with respect to their kids), teachers (with respect to their students), and individuals (with respect to themselves) will likely formulate and answer those questions in different, if overlapping, ways.

One of the things my mom did that I'm very grateful for is rewarding me for reading without respect to my reading choices. She often did this with games where reading time or book reports could earn me screen time or points I could exchange for prizes, and that was really fun. For those games, any book would do.

Another thing she did to make reading a cite of freedom was suspend all household censorship rules when it came to books. There were no age-appropriateness checks for books like there were for TV and movies. And (sometimes?) if a movie I wanted to see was forbidden but it had a novelization, I could even get that restriction lifted by reading the novelization! (I used that to watch Godzilla. :D)

But incentives don't to be direct, external rewards like that, either. It could be quality time or an organized activity like 'choose any book, and we'll both read it and talk about our favorite parts', a informal little two-person book club.

Rewards can be weaved into a reading-adjaceng activity, too: I used to go to bookstores with my dad and we'd just sit in the book's coffee shop together. He'd get an Americano and I'd get one of whatever I wanted, and so trips to the bookstore meant a free coffee-themed milkshake at least. ;

Books can also be made into their own treats! On those bookstore trips soth my dad, when it was time to go, he'd offer me a deal: I'll buy you any one magazine. When I picked an expensive, imported Linux magazine, I felt like a winner— I was gaming the system. And since he'd only buy one, if I finished a magazine while sitting with him, that meant I got to take home one that was brand new to me instead of one I already started. That's practically a twofer!

When I was really lucky, he'd offer to buy a book instead. When the item I chose was expensive and his offer had been unconstrained, he'd always make a show of griping and balking, but he stuck to his word. And so he let me feel like I was getting away with something when my 'one book' was a fancy hardcover classic with golden-edged pages— even if the translation was from 1862 and I'd have to do some work to get through it. My dad's griping about prices kinda turned his offer into a game and the book itself into a treasured prize. :)

When I was little, my parents would also take me to the library often, and when they did, I was never restricted once I got there. Sometimes they took me to a specific event or activity. But afterwards and otherwise, I was on my own! I could play games on the library computers or just nap in a bean bag chair thw whole time, and that was fine. I could come home with books but I didn't have to. All of that helped to make the library a relaxing and fun place.

My examples so far were all outside of school, but allowing reading choices in school is necessary, too. One year in high school, my English class was presented with a pile of books, and told to each choose one to read and write about. One of my besties chose The Brothers Karamozov, and he loved it. He talked about it with me and all his other friends, sometimes making playful allusions to it by comparing classmates to characters or referring to them by the names of characters. That got some of us interested in it that book and its author, too. I ended up picking a Dostoevsky book, too (The Idiot, a blessedly thinner volume).

Assigning that same book to the whole class would probably have been a disaster. It definitely wouldn't have clicked with some of us, and it's long as fuck. I might've bitched about it myself! But in a context of freedom? The book was evidently perfectly choosable, rewarding for the student who chose it, and intriguing to at least some of his classmates. The freedom to choose is powerful.

That kind of freedom is something all learners deserve. And it's not surprising that in the absence of such freedom, students (of all skill levels) often shirk, cheat, or refuse to read what they're assigned. But that behavior doesn't necessarily indicate a general unwillingness or inability to read comparable books.

To try to kind of answer your question: not every book a kid reads will be their choice, and that's okay. Parents and teachers will want kids to read books that challenge them. They'll also want them to read books that help adults assess the kid's reading skills. For those purposes, there are probably some times that gifted and enthusiastic readers don't need any particular books prescribed to them at all. And for those purposes, there will be times when students (gifted or not) will be asked to do reading that feels like work to them. Maybe reading that feels like work will be more frequent for readers who are less advanced or less talented.

But both inside school and outside school, kids should be given opportunities to choose what they read, too. Sometimes that can be from s selection of prescribed options but imo sometimes their freedom of choice should be absolute. Whether they have a choice or not should always be clear (no take-backsies!). And when they do have a choice, their choices are sacred and not to be judged, regardless of how skilled or enthusiastic a reader they are. The only feedback they should get about their reading choices (if any) is some kind of sincere encouragement or congratulation.