Don’t be fooled, for this is not a book. It is a paragon of hilarity, creativity and ingenuity. It'll have you looking at things in a whole new way. Don’t miss out on this one. This Is Not a Book is by French illustrator Julian Jullien and is published by Phaidon.
One to add to your bedtime arsenal. Seriously, why won't you go to bed?! A question we all ask our kids semi-regularly. ;) Time for Bed, Fred! is by one of our current favorites illustrators, Yasmeen Ismail.
Alligator Arrived with Apples: a Potluck Alphabet Feast was penned by Crescent Dragonwagon with pictures by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey. A huge group of animal friends gather for a Thanksgiving feast and eat their way from A to Z. Alligator arrived with apples and allspice. Bear brought banana bread, biscuits and butter. Zebra zipped over a zaftig zucchini. An epic meal to go down in history! This book is an entertaining read-aloud and is about nothing if not alliteration—a phonological awareness skill that contributes to a good foundation for reading. So many children’s books have alliteration and rhyming elements, so when you’re reading them aloud to your children, you’re naturally supporting their pre-reading skills!
Alliteration is a phonological skill that contributes to emerging reading skills, but when your child becomes of reading age, some of the more significant phonemic awareness skills that contribute to a strong reading foundation are segmenting and blending. Click here for a post about phonemic awareness from a couple of years ago if anyone’s interested in learning more about it.
Some of Avery's favorite books when she was learning to read last year. Mo Willem's humorous Elephant and Piggie series has some nice repetitive dialogue and many opportunities for sight word practice, which is an important component for building reading fluency.
Age range for guided or independent reading: 5-7
Henry and Mudge is an early chapter book series by Cynthia Rylant that is a perfect transition for your child after they've mastered beginning readers and need a more substantial plot line, with a wealth of new words to decode.
Age range for guided or independent reading: 6-8
Lexile range for the series: 180L-600L
The Nate the Great series is also a wonderful early chapter book series for increasing fluency in budding readers. His mysteries provide good fuel for early readers, spurring on their curiosity and honing their inferential, problem-solving and critical thinking skills. There's a good range of easier and more difficult books in the series, plus some repetitive text for building fluency and confidence in reading ability.
Age range for guided or independent reading: 6-8
Lexile range for the series: approximately 110-480
What we're currently reading: Pie by Sarah Weeks. A fantastic story so far about friendship, family and pie. And it doesn't hurt that there's a different pie recipe at the end of each chapter! It turns out that the recipes came from all over the country and Sarah made all of the fourteen pies in the book. Her favorite was cherry, with buttermilk as a close second.