My DD (8) has now taken to reading - still slowly but with more confidence...she has been reluctant to say the least. But I've not pushed her and gently coaxed and it seems now to be paying those dividends I'd hoped for. But now my problem is the age she is her level of skill is still behind and the books she can cope with are very dull and aimed more at 4/5 year olds. How do you feel the Henry and Mudge books would go down? Or is there any recommendations someone else could give? Thanks for the help SS
Henry and Mudge are a hit with my 6yo, and my 8yo will read them as well. Also enjoyed here are the Young Cam Jansen books. Also Cynthia Rylant (author of Henry and Mudge) has another series about Henry's sister and her cat I believe more geared to girls. You may also want to look at the Junie B Jones books, they are fairly easy reads.
Many thanks as I am not American and we don't get these books here - and I have an opportunity to purchase sight unseen and wondered if it would be money well spent. Still happy to receive other suggestions too. Thanks again all - any help is appreciated - need to feed the interest...so getting some "new titles" into the UK is all good.
My dd (7 and a poor reader) is absolutely obsessed with horses. Of the new books we bought (she owns a ton LOL), this is by far my favorite: Pal the Pony. I'm not sure what your teaching philosophy is on reading, but I really try to stay away from anything that screams "sight words!" at me, and that book, although kids can easily memorize it, they can also sound out most of the words on their own. We LOVE the beautiful pictures and the 'moral' behind the story as well. We also bought this one, and although it's rated for first graders, I don't know ANY that could read it solo (except my neice..) Patch. I know with my dd, I am trying hard to find phonics readers, so we also bought the my little pony phonics set (which dd was extremely excited about) but personally I thought it was a waste of money. Sure the kids could sound out some words (basic c-v-c), but not one of the names are pronounceable, which leaves the kids completely relying on the pictures for the story... not what I needed for my recovering-from-sightwords kid. I tend to stay mostly away from 'chapter books' for dd because too many words on a page (normally) is truly scary for her. However, she'll look at our resource books with delight LOL.
Don't think my answer was helpful so I deleted it! Sorry. My youngest would read books like Patch mentioned above....I'm trying to think of the transition books that got her there. She did like the Arthur books - but that might be too young for an 8 year old. Hope you find something.
Someone on another thread mentioned the Thorton Burgess books. You might see if you can get them. The "first" one is "Old Mother West Wind". Chapters are VERY short, and not a lot of words. But the stories are good, too. I LOVE Henry and Mudge!!!
I have a ds8 who is exactly where yours is at. He loves Henry and Mudge. Another he liked was Mr Putter and Tabby. It's about an old man and his cat, but they are so funny! We only could find 3 or 4 in that series, don't know how many there might be. Good luck and congratulations on getting to this point!
Brilliant - have some books in my possession now - first one we're reading to her is How to be a....Wizard (she's a huge Harry Potter fan) so that seems to be going down ok. Will post when we get to the next. Many thanks for the suggestions - there will be futher shopping trips later in the year. SS
I just checked my daughter old reading log for that age. Here's what I found... She read books from these series... Pinky and Rex Henry and Mudge Young Cam Jansen Mr. Putter and Tabby Gus and Grandpa Martha and George She also read some books of the Pony Pals series. If you have to buy them, I'd caution about getting to many. I think after five, she'd had enough. They get old after a while. Later that same year she moved on to Magic Tree House books, Boxcar Children (with my help) and those Illustrated Classics -- Classic books rewritten with simpler text, larger print and a few more pictures. (Swiss Family Robinson was terrible in this format, but more action based stories are ok.) Scholastic has a Level search on their website that may be helpful to you. You can enter the "interest" level (what age/grade are you trying to interest), the reading level (goes by grade), the type of book (classic, nonfiction, fantasy, etc.) and subject. Here's the link... http://bookwizard.scholastic.com/tbw/homePage.do You might want to do a search on a book that your child has just read to get an idea of their scale. Different publishers have different formulas for figuring out what reading level a book is.
