I am always on the look out for engaging beginning reader books. And I mean really engaging. When I saw Big Cats, part of the We Read Phonics series, I nearly cried with excitement.

Big Cats includes real photographs of lions, tigers and house cats. Below each photograph is one sentence of clearly spaced text containing mainly simple sight words and CVC words. Unlike many early readers, this books contains words that are truly meant for the early reader. I get so frustrated by the books sold by big chain stores that claim to be early readers. I’ve known many parents who have gotten home with a ‘level one book’ only to be disappointed that their children can barely get through the first few words. The misrepresentation of book’s levels are unfair to parents and children alike.

This was why I nearly cried when I saw Big Cats, an honest to goodness Level 1 book. And it’s non-fiction too!

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A few months ago, I presented a workshop titled, Books as Gifts. The participants were so thrilled to learn about great, newer titles available for children. As in all things in life, I find that parents get in ruts with their book buying. They buy the titles they know or the titles that are face out at their local Barnes and Noble. While all these are wonderful books, there is such joy in reading a new book to a child.

In response to the feedback from my initial presentation, I developed a class called Beyond Good Night Moon: An Adventure through New Children’s Literature. After I teach the in person class, I will be sharing some of the  materials here.

In the meantime to pique your interest, check out the course description below:

Beyond Goodnight Moon is an interactive and informative course. Through lecture and discussion, participants will understand how reading aloud to children of all ages can foster long-term educational success, learn how to select age appropriate books for the children in their lives and know how to encourage and instill a love of reading. At the end of the sessions participants will receive a book list for children ages birth through fifth grade that highlights developmental reading milestones. Books will be current with publication dates of 2008-2011.

If you are local, please click here to read more about the class and to learn how to register.

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There are a few things I can do for hours at a time. These things include reading, browsing in a bookstore or library and finding new websites or blogs on line. I find that my focus here has been on literature but I do also love finding great new resources to use with the early readers in  my life, both clients and family.

Last week, I stumbled upon Kelly’s Kindergarten and my printer hasn’t been the same since. Kelly has pages upon pages of early reading games available for her reader’s to print and use as they wish. Both clients and my little Katherine have loved practicing their skills with new sets of games. It’s amazing how the same skill practiced with new materials can become fun again.

And now I must cut this blog post short to go and print more games!

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Caroline and my husband Rob are both avid Yankee fans and take turns quizzing each other on obscure Yankee history or current statistics. And of course, Caroline also loves to quiz me and relish in my relative lack of knowledge. So when I saw a  baseball book in my new favorite section of the library, I grabbed it thinking maybe I could brush up on my facts and surprise Caroline the next time she quizzed me.

Instead, Len Berman’s The 25 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time has barely left Caroline’s side.

She’s read whole sections about Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. She’s scanned side bars about other great player’s stats. She’s poured over pictures and committed many new random facts to memory.

And all of this she has done with Rob at her side. Caroline’s always been a mamma’s girl. In fact, I used to have vivid day dreams of accompanying her to college. I just couldn’t imagine the day when she would ever separate. Over the past six months, she and Rob have become really good buddies. Not only do I now know she will go college on her own but I also am so blessed to watch her relationship with her dad grow. And this baseball book will now be another shared love and interest between Caroline and her new best friend.

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There is so much to say about the intersection between technology and literacy today. I’m actually considering devoting a day a week to this idea but for now I just want to sing the praises of the iPad. I have been using my iPad with a client for the past few weeks. He is a tough little guy to motivate so we have been doing a hands on activity followed by an iPad game to hold his attention. I was beginning to think of the iPad games as the fluff between the real instruction but today I stumbled upon an app that showed me what a true literacy tool the iPad can be.

Many parents have used  the BOB books with their children.

 They are one of the few phonetically controlled books available at the big chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders. In order to use these  books though, you need to have children who are not only happy to read phonetically controlled text but also happy to follow a story with no plot and black and white stick figure illustrations. So as a reading specialist I appreciate the BOB books for their phonetic content but as a parent, I have begun to detest these books as much as my girls did.

Now…enter BOB books for iPad. Children are exposed to phonetically controlled text. They are able to read sentences to themselves and also to highlight pictures and drag the correct letters to spell the word highlighted. Each time a letter is highlighted, it’s sound is read aloud. And the pictures are in color. And the characters can be manipulated and moved.

The iPad has brought the BOB books to life in a perfect intersection of the old and the new. As both a reading specialist and a mom, I couldn’t be happier.

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We’ve had one of those weeks. Holidays, delayed openings, predictions of more snow and two sick children. I was feeling a bit discouraged this morning before I sat down to read with the girls. I had gone to the library yesterday so we had a full bag of new books. I always get a collection of picture books for the girls and I to read together as well as some chapter books for Caroline to read on her own.

Today, Caroline grabbed for the chapter books before I began reading the picture books. As I read to Katherine, Caroline sat beside me, shushing me the whole time because she was trying to read to herself. Part of me wanted desperately to have some alone time this morning or at least some silence. 

As I sat on the couch, I realized my time reading to the girls was really an investment. I may not have gotten much quiet time this morning but my time spent reading aloud today, would lead to quiet moments later. If I hadn’t spent day after day reading aloud to Caroline when she was Katherine’s age, she wouldn’t have been shushing me this morning, trying to find her own reading quiet.

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I am participating (poorly!) in Mother Reader’s Comment Challenge 2011. While I’m not feeling great about my seeming lack of ability to comment on five blogs a day, I am still loving the challenge. I continue to find it really hard to shake my lurker ways but as I break my cybersphere shyness, I am meeting some great new bloggers. As is the case with new friends, I am thinking about new questions and new perspectives.

Lauri fromBookBlogFun posted recently about terminology. She remembers hearing a more positive term for ‘reluctant reader’ and asked her readers to help to jog her memory. In the responses, I was reminded of the great Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. In this book, Miller encourages teachers and parents to remember that readers lie within all of our children. She uses terms like developing, dormant or underground reader.

As I think about the ‘reluctant readers’ that I have known over the years, each of these terms better describes them. For each of these ‘reluctant readers’ did not want to be reluctant. If they could have decoded the words they would have been voracious readers. If they could have read fluently, they would have been book worms. If they knew how to find good books, they would have been bibliophiles.

I so appeciate this reminder to be relucant to call our readers reluctant…

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Last week, I was thrilled to hear from an old friend. She is a friend that I feel like I talk to every week. She writes a wonderful blog and through it, I keep up with her and her family’s daily adventures. In reality though, she and I haven’t talked in months so when I heard her southern accent coming through loudly on my voice mail, I quickly called her back. Our conversation was great as always although this time it was filled with frustration. Sara has a very bright son and while we all wish for our children to be ‘geniuses’, as in all things in life there are pros and cons.

Among other topics, we discussed finding appropriate literature for Liam to read. He can read anything you put in his hands but as a kindergarten finding appropriate subject material at his reading level is a true challenge. Liam pours over non fiction books filled with bite sized facts but he also enjoys fiction. Now that I am reading nonfiction myself (finally!), one of the first things I thought of were nonfiction books that read like narratives.

My current favorite in this category is Redwoods by Jason Chin.

This creative book combines fact and fantasy to teach it’s readers about the giant redwood trees. Throughout the tale, we see a young boy reading a book (with the same pictures as ours) he found on the subway about the redwoods. As he reads, creatures and people from the times he reads about populate the pages around him. The little boy exits the subway and instead of his familiar destination, he walks into the redwood forest. Throughout his adventures the reader learns fact after fact about the redwoods while the boy escapes, fire and rain, meets animals in the forest and even climbs the giant 200 foot trees.

Redwoods is the perfect combination of fact and fiction making it an ideal choice for any reader in you life.

And a favor… I would love any other book recommendations you might have for Liam. He is a kindergartener who can read anything you hand him with nearly perfect comprehension. He loves sports and his family and friends so those topics would be especially appreciated.  And of course, age appropriate content is a must. I will post my final list here to share.

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The buzz in the children’s literature blogging world this week has been all about the American Library Association Awards. And the Today Show. The Today Show has always featured the winners of the Newbery and Caldecott awards on the day after the big announcement. I have  enjoyed the segments as I must admit that seeing an author or illustrator gets me more excited than seeing a famous movie star. I frequently go to book signings and imagine what it would be like to be on the other side of the table in the same way that movie goers imagine themselves on the screen.

Therefore, when I heard that the Today Show chose not to air this segment because of lack of interest, Iwas so disheartened. I believe that an organization as big as the Today Show can risk low ratings for one segment of their day to help send a message. I recently finished the book Devotion by Dani Shapiro (a great adult read, by the way!), in which she quotes Ayurvedic philosophy.

“Be careful what you surround yourself with because you become what you surround yourself with.”

Not eloquently written words for sure, but sometimes stating the obvious doesn’t hurt. If we surround ourselves with books, we will become book lovers. It is as simple as that. Maybe, The Today Show will appropriately respond to the hundreds of e-mails they are receiving from the children’s lit crowd and decide to surround America with excellent children’s literature for just a few minutes. Let us hope…

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I have had many parents ask the question, “That doesn’t count, does it?”

“My son reads magazines, but that doesn’t count, does it?”

“My husband reads the newspaper but that’s not enough of a reading model, is it?”

“Those graphic novels? Do those count?”

And I say over and over again, “Any reading counts.” Really. Any reading at all gives children exposure to unique vocabulary. Any reading helps children build their reading stamina. Any reading gives kids confidence that they can read.

That’s why I was happy to discover both of my girls reading this morning. Even if Katherine, age 4, was ‘reading’ my School Library Journal and Caroline, age 7, was reading her school directory. Because any reading counts.

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