Goodman's Five Star Stories: Adventures: 10 Tales of Adventure

My mother, a woman trying to learn to read and understand written English, is quite taken with this series of stories. We bought her the first selections, and she has continued to 'graduate' with each book she buys. These books offer short, fun stories and then ask a series of questions which test on the vocubalary that might have been learnt, and on the reader's understanding of the plot of the story. Though the questions were sometimes tough for my mother, she was always able to either get the answer correct on her first try after she had read the story a few times, or after I had noted that she had made a mistake for one or two questions. These stories and questions helped her to understand the ideas of theme, characters, events, and settings. The vocabulary word tests were good because she would be able to look up the word in the story and determine how it had been used. All in all, I've been very pleased with my mother's appeciation of the books. I honestly believe that my mother has gained at least two or three grade levels in reading with the help of this series of books and some minor weekly tutoring.