Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Thoughts on early reader books...

As of right DD has a TON of books but we're always on the lookout for more. Anyways, pretty much all her books are some sort of story book. There's a clear story line, etc. We do have some non-fiction books that are directly related to some of her major interests too (like a butterfly book, for example).

But I know she's interested in reading, she's always pointing to words and asking what they are. She's got some sight words too and purposely looks through books that she has that has the sight words in them just to see them. I don't want to actively teach her but I do feel that it is important to give her whatever materials that she would want (ok, within reason.. I'm sure she'd love for me to buy a pool and build a playground just for her but that's not going to happen!).

We always try to encourage her interests, so I'm wondering if we should pick up some early reader books, like the Bob books? What did other parents do? Obviously, we'll continue to read a lot to her and she always sees my nose stuck in a book but I just wonder if I should try some of these books or not?

For the very early stages, we used P.D. Eastman and Dr. Seuss books, as well as the Step Into Reading Series (they're a mixed bag, but some are pretty good). My son's real breakthrough book was "Big Dog, Little Dog". One of my favorite silly early readers by Dr. Seuss, under his backwards pseudonym T. Lesieg, is "In a People House". There are others too, like the original Little Bear book by Sendak.

One thing that I wish we had done is get an early reader's dictionary. You might look into that, to encourage her to read more on her own.

We're also big fans of Step Into Reading and the Dr. Sueuss/Eastman. Lucounu, you're the first Mom I've seen who puts those at the top of your list, too! Great minds think alike, I guess!

DS6 learned to read on his own at 2 from the Step books. He was a Thomas-aholic, so we had all of them. First, he would memorize the story, so when we paused at a word and pointed to it, he would fill it in. Then, we'd see him "reading to himself" in his crib at night (which of course, was reciting what he had memorized). Very quickly, though, he started recognizing those words in different stories and contexts.

Lots of people like the "Bob" books, but those bore me silly. My 27 month old can sight read a few of the early scholastics readers, but I think he too is better off with whole-language fun readers like SIR than a black-and-white book about "I see..." My mom is a reading teacher and she's also offered us Dick and Jane books, but since we don't really talk that way, I wasn't a fan.

Oh, my little one also loves Spot books and is getting lots of sight word vocab from them. He now has about 30 words he can read outside of context (ie on plain white paper), and many others he recognizes in books. We don't do formal reading programs or flash cards or anything like that, so he must be picking it up from reading the stories together. I'm a whole language fan because it's working in our house, but I'm not 100% sure exactly what I'm doing right! LOL!

I think what books you have is less important than what your attitude is, but that said, DS loved the Oxford Reading Tree Songbird Phonics series. I bought them for him when he was reading a bit and being obviously frustrated by being unable to read whole books. This definitely went well: they have good stories (he still insists on keeping them in his book case and occasionally reads some!) and he was immediately able to read whole books which he loved. I think the moment had to be right, though: since he was actively wanting to read whole books, he leapt straight in, and we were able to maintain a policy that these were his "reading books" which were only ever read by him, not to him. I suspect that if we had got them when he wasn't quite ready for that, we might have felt pushed into reading them aloud to him and then they'd have been just another set of story books. So my gut feel is that if your DD is interested but not actively pushing her limits yet, you might want to hold off for a few months.

We also read a lot of Richard Scarry books- some of them have nice little details in the pictures and loads of labels on things.
We do use Dr. Suess and P.D. Eastman as well.
I think the important thing is just to read together and that your LO chooses books she's interested in. We do library trips and Nick often wanders into the reference books for the older kids/adults. We've brought home books on 18th century tools with beautiful illustrations/descriptions, and last week it was the human anatomy as he wanted to know about bones. He LOVED seeing the pictures of the patellas, metacarpals and how they all interconnect.
Have fun! It's great that she's so eager to read!

We liked to do a lot of more complicated books we read mixed with some level one readers (like the Biscuit books). I do not like the ones with the pictures with the words under them just the regular level ones. Then on occasion I would point at one of the words and let him fill in the blank.

Ha. I'll second (or fourth?) P.D. Eastman. Go, Dog Go! was one of DD's favorites at around the time she started reading. In fact, it was the book she used to first demonstrate that she had sight words. I bought it because we were out running errands all day, I forgot to bring something for DD to do in the car, and it was the best thing I could find at the used bookstore we stopped at. DD fell instantly in love with it.

Other than that, DD really didn't get into any of the very simple early readers. Once you get past that stage, there are some great early chapter books (e.g., Frog & Toad, Fly Guy, Amanda Pig, etc.) that I still enjoy to this day.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I didn't recognize the name Eastman at first but after looking at the books in Amazon I sure do.

I was worried about the Bob books because what I saw on the internet.. well, they reminded me the Dick and Jane books, which I'm not too enthused about. But I can definitely do Dr. Seuss and Eastman. The other suggestions you guys mentioned too look good so I'm going to see if I can pick them up cheap somewhere.


But ColinsMum brings up a good point... when do you know it's a good time to introduce these? DD certainly loves reading and finding words. She also asks me to write words for her sometimes too and definitely requests certain letters/numbers. Do you think it could still be too early, though?



DD doesn't have quite that many... maybe just under 10? But we're the same, I am WAAAYYY too lazy for flashcards! And, well, never had the desire to do them in the first place. But I think she's constantly seeing DH and myself read so that probably makes a big difference (I know it was the same for me, my dad's a bookaholic, and surprise, surprise, I was an early reader too). It's funny, she'll even take out our science textbooks and flip through them and the other day I had a shirt with differential equations and integrals on it and she was asking me what they were.

I am not a huge fan of Bob books, but some people love them. I bought them for my DD4 when she was two and before she was three, she could read those, but had almost no interest and I didn't force them on her. She actually didn't want to read aloud to me for a long time though would slip and read my emails aloud or I would catch her reading and knew she could read complicated words etc. but she is just willing to do it now. I would pick up early readers, but she turned her nose up at them. We go to the library and pick out stacks of books each week so we have a huge variety. Many picture books work well as early readers and have more diverse vocabulary.

I used Bob books with two of my kids. My daughter liked the first four sets but not the fifth one (some of the stories made no sense).

I thought that the first set was very good for a child who was really just beginning. YMMV.

Have you tried the Starfall website? I hadn't heard of it when DD5 was starting, but a lot of people here said that their kids loved it.

Val