Customer Reviews

Reading-Literature: The Primer

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book gave my daughter confidence and graduated her from Bob Books and Nora Gaydos readers to real books. When she finished it the next level hadn't been published yet but I do plan on using both levels available with my youngest child. My daughter really enjoyed this book and was sad that it ended.

We are enjoying these books. My son did not like the BOB books at well. Phonics instruction did not work for him. Being a visual-spatial learner, he's doing much better being able to learn whole-words in stories that are familiar to him. There's enough repetition to give him practice, but not so much that it makes him bored.

The stories in this book are great. Many will be familiar to the children who read these, and others will be new but no less delightful. The best thing about the stories is there is LOTS of repetition of key phrases and words, so the child can read a lot of material without too much additional effort. It is so satisfying for kids to be able to read a longer story. I've been using this book with my 7 y.o. who needs a confidence/interest boost in reading.

I highly recommend this book!

What a great concept-- preserving the literary quality of first books, in both language and content. HOWEVER, I will let an excerpt speak for itself regarding why in retrospect I would not have spent $9 to order this book for my four year old:

At the end of one story, in which the plot revolves around an old woman trying to get home by asking each of the personified objects to do a violent deed to force her stubborn pig to jump over a stile:
"The rat began to gnaw the rope, the rope began to hang the butcher, the butcher began to kill the ox, the ox began to drink the water, the water began to quench the fire, the fire began to burn the stick, the stick began to beat the dog, the dog began to bite the pig, the pig got over the stile, And the old woman got home that night." That is the end of the story-- WEIRD!!! what is the lesson of this folk tale other than violence to achieve a goal? I am no pacifist, and I know these books are old fashioned and often a little rough for our modern sensitivities (though wary of that in my efforts to preseve my child's innocence, i am generally a big fan of old fashioned books rather than dumbed-down modern, popular stuff), but in this case "out-dated" doesn't seem to describe the problem-- i don't think this is great literature by yesterday's standards either.

Too bad-- the search for decent literature continues, and apparently going back in time doesn't necessarily solve the problem...