Choosing Books for Your Child
Article by Megan Goss, 2001
For the parents of a beginning reader, choosing appropriate books to support reading endeavours is often confusing and intimidating. Parents want the books they choose to be challenging enough to teach something about reading, yet comfortable enough to build confidence in reading for the child. Some guidelines and advice may demystify this process.
One basic concept to be aware of with the earliest reading books is that they almost always fall into two basic catagories: predictable texts, and those guided by some phonetic rule they are trying to teach. These two kinds of readers serve different purposes, and can be used most effectively when those purposes are known. Both can be valuable and should be used for young readers.
Predictable textbooks are used to teach children strategies about reading. These texts will have the same basic line repeated throughout the book, with a one or two word difference on each page. For instance, page 1 may say, "I like fruit." Page 2 would then say, "I like flowers." Each page following these would have the same format, beginning with "I like ________." On every page you would find an illustration matching the sentence (a picture of some fruit on page 1, some flowers on page 2, etc.). These illustrations are crucial to this type of book, since they help the early reader figure out the unknown word. The pattern in these books is soon apparent to the young reader, and this is comforting; they know that they can read the "I like" parts on each page, and must only figure out the new, final word in each sentence. Predictable textbooks teach children to use the clues given to them by the surrounding text and by the illustrations in order to figure out the word(s) they don't know.
Some would argue that this isn't really reading, since the child often memorizes the pattern quickly, and sometimes doesn't even look at the words and 'read' them once they are familiar. This isn't a fair assessment of what these books are meant to do, however. Predictable texts are wonderful confidence boosters for the earliest readers. These beginners need all the clues and help they can get, and they feel powerful when they find the pattern and begin to feel they can actually read an entire book. They still must figure out the unknown word(s), using whatever cues they can (illustrations, beginning letter sounds, etc.). The confidence they feel when they can define themselves as actual book readers is something powerful, and leads them to want to try more and more.
The second category of beginning reader text concerns books that focus on specific letter patterns. These are also thought of as phonics-based readers. For example, a book that is trying to teach the short sound for the vowel 'o' would be replete with words with short 'o' in the text: "Bob got the mop," for example. Because these types of books focus on a particular aspect of reading, it is easy for a parent or teacher to follow up with lessons that reinforce what the book is trying to teach. Isolating a particular sound (short 'o' for example) helps the student focus on this sound, and, hopefully, remember it enough to transfer this knowledge to other reading contexts.
Some final reminders: Both of these types of books are useful for early readers, and should be utilized. Predictable texts are often useful as the very first books for young children to try to tackle. Matching the phonics-based books with what you would like to teach helps make these books more relevant to your child. As you can see, these early texts do not deal much with comprehension, so it is important to read good literature to your children, and to ask them comprehension questions as you go, in order to supplement this kind of reading. As your child grows as a reader the texts can become more complex, and comprehension becomes more relevant.
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