Finding the Best Books for Your Early Reader

Your child is learning to read, how exciting! Now let's talk about how to help them develop that skill.

My first suggestion - go to the library. No, wait, take your child to the library. If you want to pick out the best book for your child,  you need your child there (at least until you both really know what they can read and what they like).

Find the Early Reader section by the fish tank, and start browsing by topic or type of story. Do they like the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems? We have those. Do they like Barbie, Legos or super heroes? We have those. Let them pick a large stack of books.

Let's look at all those wonderful books your child selected. Have them open each book and try to read one page. For every time they don’t know a word count it on the fingers of one hand. When they are done with the page see how many fingers it took. If a book had no or only one word they didn’t know set it aside for later. If a book had four or five words they didn’t know, set it aside in a different stack. Go to those just right books with two or three words per page your child didn’t know. These are perfect, a challenge but not too much. Pick out several to check out.

Now let's talk about those other two stacks. The no or one word stack are books they can easily read. Check out a few of those to help them become faster, smoother readers and have better comprehension. Just make sure you picked some of the slightly challenging ones first.

The four or five words they didn't know stack are a little too hard to read on their own. Let them pick out a couple of those to read together. This lets you model that you enjoy reading and think it is important. It shows you think that with help they will grow their reading skills and it offers you a wonderful opportunity to spend time together.

Now you have selected today’s books, most with enough challenge to grow their skills, some easy to help them see they can read a whole book by themselves and a few you can share.

If you forget the steps, just look for the wooden blocks in the Early Reader collection. They have the steps written in English and Spanish to remind you.

See you in the Easy Readers!