Brand New Readers

I wanted to tell you about a series I have been using for about 4 years with new/young/struggling readers.

They are called Brand New Readers, and there are many reasons I love them. They come in sets of four - they are small and manageable for little hands, yet not board books.

Each set has a character or group of characters that have different "adventures," so once they are familiar with one book, they will recognize them in the following three.

They are set up with a little "how to" page for parents at the beginning of the book. They offer suggestions on how to introduce and read the book. At the back of the book, they give parents another page that suggests ideas on how to talk about the book.

The books themselves are crafted well, and with early readers in mind. The writers knew what they were doing. Here's why:

• The back of the book has a "blurb" to get their minds ready
• They have short, one sentence per page -kids will learn about sentence structure and how to read it fluently rather than phrase by phrase
• The vocabulary comes up more than once, yet in different contexts so the kids are seeing/decoding the same words throughout but not in a boring, repetitive way
• There is a STORY! it isn't simply pattern words stuck together like some early readers that make little to no sense.
• They are humorous - kids enjoy them.
• The font is good size, type for kids to recognize letters/word easily
• The adventures are things kids can relate to
• The pictures support for decoding and comprehension
• The punctuation is more complex...some include quotations, etc. to introduce to new readers

I would highly recommend this series over many of the products out there for new readers.