Developing Reading Fluency with Books in a Series - Kat Style

These some of the kids books I've saved or collected over the years.  Something from Nothing (Phoebe Gilman) was my absolute favourite.  It featured a young Jewish boy whose grandfather would turn the scraps left from his special baby blanket into something new- a jacket, a vest, a tie, a handkerchief, a button, and a wonderful story.  The illustrations showed a whole new story- a mouse family using the pieces that fell beneath the floorboards to make their own something!  

I read somewhere that once a child can sound words out on their own well you should no longer prompt them to sound out words they ask you to read for them.  It interrupts their reading-flow.  Instead just read the word clearly, define it if they ask, and they`ll learn what it looks like.  

Throughout college and university, I`ve noticed that my language skills give me an advantage more and more often.  For me, reading really is like jumping into the world of the story.  A particularly vivid book can prompt me to hear, see, and feel everything as if it`s truly happening.  Sometimes I`ll even speak with the same language, cadence, and inflection as the book is written!  My vocabulary helps me self-teach.  I can use precise wording to verbalize what I'm learning with all the nuances required.  It helps me make sense of topics I haven`t encountered before.  The set of Latin and Greek roots I`ve learned from my reading helps me read unfamiliar science text, and even everyday Spanish and Italian.

To help your child visualize while they read, they can try some of these activities:

• Writing and illustrating their own stories
• Acting out stories
• Writing their own extensions, or fanfiction

My parents were particularly fond of bringing my brother and I to the local, (very small and safe) library and letting us loose.  My mom had no problem checking out 20 books a WEEK for us!  By grade 8, I had read every remotely interesting book in that building.  

The children`s books above shared some characteristics:     

• My parents loved them.  I read Little House on the Prairie because my dad said it was the first English book her was addicted to.
• I could relate to them!  My class loved Ping, a book featuring an Asian duck.
• Vivid descriptions reinforced my ability to "see" the book while I read it 

I still choose books like this- ones that have been recommended, ones with a similar but different world, and especially books that feature characters like me.    

Growing Fluency with Books in a Series 

Books in a series are great!  You can really get into the premise and the characters.  The first series- Dave Pilkey's Captain Underpants- is appropriate for young readers in grade three, but if you can motivate your child to work through the longer books when they're younger, all the better, if only because it gives you more time to get through the other treasuries.  These are listed in ascending order of difficulty and length.

1.  Captain Underpants - Dave Pilkey
This is the ultimate starter book for kids who have mastered children's books.  Captain Underpants is a hapless superhero in underwear who goes about town saving people from toilet-humour travesties.  

2.  Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder
My dad was reading one of these books when he stepped into the street in Malinao, Philippines and was run over by a car.  He subsequently spent a month in hospital, unsure if he would walk again...still reading these books.  Laura tells the story of her pioneer family in early America, from their clan in the Big Woods to her marriage.  As the family travels west, they homestead in various states, face a long winter, battle droughts and infestations and live in a dug-out by Plum Creek!  Kids will learn history, ye-olde vocabulary, and tons on how many things were done before industrialization!  Laura's writing is accessible to young and old.  Don't be surprised if you snatch the book off their nightstand!

3.  The Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin, or modern equivalent 
I put "modern equivalent" because the series references cassette tapes, super-perms and station-wagons, which are just a tiny bit behind the times.  These books are so easy to read, and encompass different lifestyles, (Stacey, the urban shopper with diabetes) your child is bound to relate to one of the babysitters and immediately want to start a babysitting business.  Find a teen or young adult, they will have dozens of these to unload on you!  This series is for gathering knowledge about how other people live in present times.

3.  The Giver, Messenger, Gathering Blue - Lois Lowry 

The Giver is mandatory reading for all humans.  These books contain some heavy subjects.  The Giver is a man in a heavily regimented community who is designated to carry all the knowledge- good and bad- on behalf of everyone else.  He alone knows of war, pain, famine.  All three books in the series carry strong themes of not fitting in, of being different- but of being special as well.  I suggest reading these first, so you can talk with your child about the stories.       

4.  Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery 

Anne is another misfit.  When Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert decide to adopt a boy to be a farmhand, (apparently a completely acceptable practice in PEI in the early 1900s) they get a red-haired klutz with a huge imagination instead.  These books are proper novels, set in small type with long chapters, often shelved in both the adult and teen section of the bookstore.  Anne is- Anne is just the best person.  Read the books, get your children to read the books, and get to know her.  Plus, you learn some Canadian/Maritime slang in addition to the lives and vocabulary of the 1900's.  When I say my Lolo is my kindred spirit, I learned it from here.  

5.  Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter will become a box set that all home libraries must possess, like 2,3, and 4 above.  The books age with your children.  As the reader grows older, so too do the themes of each book.  Harry Potter is the ultimate Latin learner.  Almost all the spells in the series can be explained if you simple examine the base words.  Priori Incantatem- prior incantation.  Expelliarmus - expel arms.  Wingardium leviosa - wings levitate.  Duro - durable.  Liberacorpus - liberate corpse.  

From here you can help your children delve into the world of adult fiction.  Once I had exhausted the teen section, I didn`t know where to start.  The adult fiction section was huge!  Now I tend towards books that have been recommended by other nerds and friends, popular books, and those with attractive covers and summaries I find at the used book store or the library.

You can supplement these with:
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Sisterhood Everlasting  - Ann Brashares
His Dark Materials Trilogy - Philip Pullman
The Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins

Books For When You've Achieved Reading Fluency

The Giver - Lois Lowry

Also listed above, this book of dystopian fiction shows how things can go wrong when knowledge is reserved for a select few.  In this case, just one man and his apprentice.  It is not a problem of ignorance, where people aren`t taught things they should be, but one of experience, life, humanness, learning, opportunity, and of course, freedom.  

His Dark Materials Series - Philip Pullman

Lyra plays protagonist in the series, aided by Will started in book two.  This series is phenomenal.  Religion, power, hope, death, person-hood, the beyond, mysticism, magic, technology, manipulation, physics, existence, planes of existence, many-worlds theory, an unknown force for consciousness, all of these are covered in the trilogy.  Some of my personal existential philosophy comes from these books.  These books influenced me to explore physics.  This is teen action with adult concepts.  Read it.

Live Through This - ed. Sabrina Chapadjiev

An anthology, this book is a must-read for those who identify themselves (or have been forcibly identified as) Other.  You will find amazing pieces that illustrate the intersection between creativity and self-destruction and light a path towards wholeness.  If you have no problem writing an essay on ways you have overcome, check out this book.