Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Early readers



Only one month until summer and I am already planning to put my kids to work. For my eldest this means Russian lessons, and for my youngest--reading.

I've never worked with small children professionally, but what I've learned from having two of my own is that each learns to read differently. The eldest went from 0 to 60 in about three weeks. My youngest is learning word by word. In fact, he's taking a "whole language" approach on his own.

So, I'm in need of some early readers. Here's what I remember from when I went through this six years ago:

  • Frog and Toad, but of course
  • Henry and Mudge
  • Amanda and Oliver

See why I need some help? Let me add that my kid is a sucker for anything with animals and anything to do with science and technology. Stories having to do with complex interpersonal relations (someone's left out, someone is teased, someone is angry, etc.) seem to make him nervous.

Just asking this question makes me grateful for the kidlit blog world. (I couldn't get this information from the newspapers.) In just 24 hours I'll have an entire booklist of excellent, intelligent titles. So thank you for being here!