Book Selection

By Phil Builder

How do you know if your children's books are appropriate for beginning reading instruction.   Hopefully your children will be taught how to select their own books, and you won't have to worry about the problem.  In modern classrooms children are taught to select books from a small collection that has been hand picked by the teacher.   But as a concerned parent you need to know what criteria to use to judge whether a book is suitable for learning to read. 

I won't waste your time telling you about all the alternative reading schemes available, but I will concentrate on what works well.  Look for the following features:

• The book language sounds as if it is being spoken by a person from your neighbourhood.  This is called Natural Language.  Natural language is the way your child speaks.  It rolls off the tongue easily, sounds natural, you recognise the sentences, and you know what words will come next!  Books which use natural language are easier for children to predict oncoming text and are easier to understand. Compare this with the following sentences which are typical of the contrived language in some reading schemes: 
   "Dan can fan the man.  Can the man fan Dan?" 
   "Here is Spot. See Spot run."
  If you find your child struggling to read such nonsense take immediate action and change his books.
   
• The book vocabulary is natural, with words of mixed length.  The words are not chosen because of their length or difficulty, or for the purpose of teaching specific sounds, but because they are the words that are needed to convey the meaning.  This means that your child will have to read words such as dinosaur, Christmas, terrifying, etc. because that is what the storyline demands.  Controlled vocabulary books on the other hand control the words used, confining the language to repeat words that have already been introduced, or using mainly words with the same sounds. This makes it harder for the author to make it sound natural, and for the reader to predict what words are coming.  Children miscue (make errors) more often on these type of books.
   
• The illustrations are matched by the text.  This means that you should be able to work out what the text is saying just by looking at the pictures.  Books where text and illustrations match are more predictable and give the learner reader much more context support for successful reading and problem solving to occur.
   
• Pages should have clearly laid out print and illustrations.  'Noisy' pages where print is mixed with the illustrations and is hard to follow is not the best for learner readers.  Print should be well spaced using a clear font, with good spacing between words.  Lines of print should not be too long, with good spacing between each line.
   
• Books with a repetitive structures and chants are excellent for beginners.  Typical of these are the classic folktales such as The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and The Gingerbread Man.  All you have to do is read the story to them a few times and your children will recognise the patterns and try to read it for themselves.  Much of it will be remembered but they will have to really read some bits.
   
• Listen to your child read and you will see by the type of errors (miscues) whether the book is suitable or not.  If the miscues sound sensible and keep the meaning of the text intact the book is OK for them at this time.  On the other hand, if the child is struggling with it you will see or hear mistakes that are not acceptable because they won't sound right, and will change the meaning or grammar.