Hey! I'm Reading!

This little book points out the many ways your child is already reading. It is a tremendous confidence builder for a child who is ready to learn to read in earnest. My 5 year old has read and re-read it and it provided a terrific gentle introduction to the subject.

This book addresses the reality of what children actually go through as they learn to read. The simple and positive text introduces children to basic pre-reading skills that they will soon or have already encountered, and lays out the different strategies they will use as they learn to read, without preaching or talking down to them. Phonics is included, but we all know that children use other clues when beginning to read, and those, realistically, are included, too. Many colorful and warm illustrations help make the more visually oriented child feel at home (my younger son.) This book did not teach my eldest to read. His teacher did. And he did. In Japanese. Having been raised bilingually, he was not very confident in his success in reading and writing in Japanese. However, many of the concepts outlined in this book (except phonics) can be applied to reading in Japanese, and he found that he was indeed, ready to read. Once he bagan to read in Japanese in school, he suddenly began to read in English, as well. Now his younger brother, who is not so verbal in either language, is enjoying this book.

This book was exactly what it took to get my 5-year-old interested in learning to read. While it does employ some of the concepts of whole language learning, it also stresses phonics in a balanced approach to teaching children to read. For us it gave my son confidence to realize he really was ready to become a new reader. He especially liked the questions at the beginning of the book which indicated he WAS ready to learn to read, and also the activities at the end of the book which included passages that he could already "read". A wonderful choice for parents who are open-minded enough to realize that phonics and whole language methods can be used together to teach children to read.

I totally disagree with the person complaining about "whole-language" as a dead-end learning method. I am a very visual learner, and did learn to read early using phonics alone, and I agree that it is very important and ultimately knowledge every child should have. I thus tried to steer my bright, eager, exceptionally verbal daughter in that direction by enrolling her in a Montessori school at the age of 3 1/2, and it was a disaster! She struggled with quietly learning all of the letter sounds, but to her dismay was constantly reversing letters and reading short words backwards, and was beginning to shy away from books altogether after a couple of months there. Alarmed, I searched for something she would enjoy that would make her feel good about reading again, and found this unique book. We devoured it the first night, and have read it over and over many times together. She cried with joy when she realized she could in fact already "read" some words using several of the methods mentioned in the book (phonics is indeed mentioned as one method). We have since switched her to a preschool where she could have more social and verbal interaction with her peers and teachers, with some much less "intensive" phonics as well as some whole language instruction. She is now 5 and beginning to read for herself, and I believe reading this book early on gave her the patience to "crack the code" of phonics while having fun and gaining confidence along the way. I highly recommend it for any eager kid that may need also need a confidence booster.