Best series books For Emerging Readers Posted By : Inger Fountain
November 27th, 2009Once kids get the hang of reading essential vocabulary words and move beyond grade based readers it can be difficult to find books that are engaging but at the same time don’t intimidate new readers with pages full of words.
/>
Series books, a set of books written in a sequential or non-sequential order that feature a stock team of characters, are wonderful for newly confident readers (if well written) because readers don’t have to be introduced to new characters and concepts all the time when they are still picking up new vocabulary.
There are a number of great series books out there for emerging readers including The Magic Tree House and The Time Warp Trio. Both of these contain short chapters and are short in length so as not to overwhelm the reader. Possibly the most engaging and appealing to kids exploring their first chapter book is the Geronimo Stilton series.
Geronimo Stilton is a mouse reporter who ends up, despite his protestations that he is a “scaredy mouse”, in all sorts of adventures around the world and in his home New Mouse City. Geronimo often interacts with his family and there despite the fact that they are quite different in character they are very supportive of each other.
The real gem in the Geronimo Stilton books is the publisher’s use of color.
The pages of Geronimo Stilton books are white, not the traditional off white of regular books. The higher quality of paper is necessary for the amount of color used throughout both the text and the pictures.
Traditional black text in a fairly standard font is interspersed every now and then by words in different fonts and of different color. To demonstrate, the word “chilly”may be a blue color and the letters may look like icicles, or snow capped mountains.
In addition the illustrations are full color and would look at home in any Saturday morning cartoon. The characters are dynamic and full of movement and personality.
These features draw young readers in and break up the text so that it does not overwhelm. In short the Geronimo Stilton series is a perfect way to introduce emerging readers to chapter books if they are reluctant to move beyond classroom readers.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.