From Cover to Cover by Kathleen T. Horning
Author:Kathleen T. Horning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-12-30T05:00:00+00:00
CHAPTER 6
Easy Readers and Transitional Books
It is a common misconception among many adults that picture books are the best books to give a child who is just learning to read. While it is true that some picture books have characteristics that make them accessible to beginning readers, most picture books, since they are intended to be read aloud to children, are written at a reading level that is much higher than that of a child in first grade. There are, however, books expressly written for children who are learning to read that use simple vocabulary, large typeface, and short sentences. These are called easy readers, beginning readers, or simply readers. One step up from readers is another category of books that are most commonly called transitional books. These books feature simple sentences and short chapters, and serve as a bridge between easy readers and longer chapter books.
Both beginning readers and transitional books are relatively new to the scene in children’s trade publishing. In 1954 novelist John Hersey wrote an article in Life magazine in which he complained that children in public schools were failing to learn to read because their schoolbooks were bland and unchallenging. He described the characters in these primers as “abnormally courteous and unnaturally clean boys and girls” and the illustrations as uniform and insipid. “Why should [children] not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate—drawings like those wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators—Tenniel, Howard Pyle, Dr. Seuss…?”
Soon after the article appeared in print, Dr. Seuss took up the challenge put forth by Hersey. He acquired a limited vocabulary list from the text book division at Houghton Mifflin and spent more than a year shaping just 237 easy-to-read words into a story. The result was the now-classic The Cat in the Hat, published by Random House in 1957. Although Hersey had been thinking of illustrations in particular when he cited Dr. Seuss, in the end it was the book’s text that stood out as remarkable. Dr. Seuss showed that with a little creativity and a lot of hard work, engaging stories could be written with a controlled vocabulary.
The same year Harper & Row came out with Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik, the first title in its influential I Can Read series. While Seuss set the standard for excellence in writing, the I Can Read series set the standard for form. Recognizing that children learning to read are eager to feel like “big kids,” Harper designed the books in their beginning reader series to look like skinny chapter books rather than picture books. Little Bear, in fact, is divided into four chapters that not only serve to give young readers natural stopping places for much-needed breaks from the hard work of reading but also help to build the self-esteem of children who pride themselves on reading chapters. The characteristic design of the I Can Read series was imitated by many other publishers as they launched their
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