Kindergarteners know a lot of words and enjoy sharing them in high volumes. Luckily, I know the same words they do plus extras, and I got to use them at a recent poetry workshop.
Me: Can you think of a word that starts with B?
Kindergartener 1: WHAT IF A DRAGON SNEEZED SO HARD IT FELL OFF THE EARTH?
Me: What if the dragon B-beh-blew his nose?
Kindergartener 2: IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TOMORROW!
Me: Happy birthday! There’s a B word! Beh Baaah bahhhhhh???!!!!!
And while I stood there, bleating like a desperate sheep with a cough, I caught the serene gaze of the only other adult in the room, the teacher, who was happily seated, smiling encouragingly. I couldn’t imagine her ducking out of the way of a book sent flying because a silent ‘e’ was elevated to enemy status (not that that’s ever happened to me).
Learning to read is hard. Children need to have phonemic awareness, understand phonics concepts (not to be confused with phonemics), apply the alphabetic principle, and deploy all of this seamlessly while having strong vocabularies, decoding abilities, syntactical/grammatical skills, as well as an early sense of critical thinking with the ability to draw from their own, albeit limited, experiences.
Also, most children resist doing what doesn’t come naturally. I remember the first book I slogged through as a five-year-old. It was like getting a baby tooth extracted without anesthesia.
Anyone with a child in elementary school is likely aware of the “reading wars” that have overflowed from PTAs to Board of Eds up to Congress1. Everyone is frustrated. Without dipping into that cauldron, the one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that to promote lifelong reading, the beginnings need to be pleasurable.2
For the record, I never got a final answer on the B-word. But the teacher said the workshop went well. I’m eternally grateful to her.
The Child was sent Scholastic’s Best Buddies early reader series by the wonderful Vicky Fang with art by Luisa Leal. Early readers are a growing genre targeted at children who know their letters and are starting to practice reading words. They‘re often levelled books, though there is a range of what publishers consider Level 1.
They’re characterized by lots of repetition and, in this case, alliteration, which strengthens fluency in reading for the littles. The illustrations are a crucial part of the storytelling and explicitly further the development of critical reading and analytical skills, pointing to an understanding of character, plot, and interiority, and are directional for learning new vocabulary.
The series is fun—it tickles and is full of delightful discovery. I forget how much, as a child, I would look at an image (of pie, for example), and it would be just as tantalizing as the real thing (sadly, now I’d eat the pie). If you have a burgeoning reader in your vicinity, one who loves animals and pie, laughing and getting into scrapes, hates rain and thunder and is starting to navigate the complexity of friendship, they’ll love these. You’ll love that they’re reading.
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/to-move-past-the-reading-wars-we-must-understand-where-they-started/2023/08
https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/about-reading/articles/print-speech-and-speech-print-mapping-early-literacy
Thank you so much for sharing BEST BUDDIES with your readers! I'm so glad you and your child enjoyed them. ❤️