Mind the Gap!: 5 Authors for Beginning Readers to Know

For the majority of my now solidly adult life, I have lived under the delusion that I am a balanced person. In my mind’s eye, I navigate life’s drama with ease, poise, and steadiness. I embody both chaos and structure, flexibility and discipline, quietness and verbosity.

Except, it turns out, I do not. At all.

Events over the last few months have brought me to the shattering realization that I am much less balance beam and much more pendulum, on a wrecking ball scale, than I ever cared to admit. What I willingly mistook for nuisance and balance were actually:

• Demolishing my first homemade pie crust attempt on my honeymoon. Then not making another one for ten years! Because if you can’t do it right the first time, you should never do it again.
• Doing no laundry at all. Then fuming through eight hundred thirty-six loads in one day. Because…well, I don’t know why, this habit is completely illogical.
• Sacrificing all carbonated beverages for life. Then drinking one Diet Dr. Pepper (I know, I know…it gets worse) to stay awake after a horrible night of the children playing “Who Can Wake Mom Up the Most” and following that up with three two liters. Because a broken deal equals no deal.
• Volunteering for every imaginable school event. Then in an inspirational moment of clarity, realizing it is all too much and removing yourself from every. single. thing. Because if you can’t do it all, doing nothing is obviously the only option left to you.
• Exercising seven days a week. Then getting sick and never exercising again because that schedule was just too demanding anyway. Because, see above.

In case you are wondering, I do occasionally see that there are other options available to me. But those other options do not fit into my paradigm of being balanced on all or balanced on nothing. Apparently, somewhere along the way I defined “balance” as “standing firmly on one side or the other.” Again, turns out, that is not what that word means. At all.

Walking into the beginning readers section of the library can have this same wrecking ball pendulum effect. You either have “See Jane Run,” with a picture of eyes above the word “see,” a picture of a little girl above “Jane,” and a pair of running legs above “run” or you have the Gettysburg address. There is very little by way of a happy medium. This section of the library should look like the London Underground: covered with signs that say “Mind the Gap!”

Recently, some good friends were lamenting this very fact on a social media thread that I, in an un-stalker-y way, read through but did not insert my twenty cents on. And there it was, inspiration! How great would it be to have a list of books that “Mind the Gap?!” Books for the child past reading the stapled together, one sentence a page books sent home from school but still not ready for Pinkalicious and the Pinktastic Zoo Day, with all its made up words mixed in with words like “unbearable” and “promised” and “suddenly.”

And so, to help with that, here are some trusted authors minding the gap. These are authors who find that balance between having books of substance and length, while still using words that beginning readers are able to recognize or sound out.

Mo Willems -The Elephant and Piggie books are the perfect starter books for the beginning reader. They have the added bonus of being books you will actually enjoy listening to, which matters, as you will be listening to them a very great deal.

Dr Seuss – It is impossible to overestimate the impact of Dr. Seuss on children’s literacy. He did a remarkable job creating fantastic tales out of sight words. One of my daughters had a very difficult time remembering “could,” “would,” “there,” and “where” until she read Green Eggs and Ham, repeatedly. While Hop on Pop may drive you to insanity, it will teach your children word recognition! And just when you think you can’t take it any more, they can turn to Cat in the Hat, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, or Cat in the Hat Comes Back and amaze you.

P.D. Eastman – A protege of Dr. Seuss, Eastman’s books are often so similar in style they are thought of as works of Seuss’. Like his mentor, these books have an uncanny ability to help children read fluently. Are You My Mother? and The Best Nest have been favorites for my reading learners.

Syd Hoff – From Danny and the Dinosaur to Sammy the Seal, these classics are exactly what your beginning reader is looking for. The stories are fun and entertaining and the language is accessible.

Arnold Lobel – The Frog and Toad books belong on every single child’s book shelf. While technically labeled reading level 2, there are enough recognizable words for beginning readers to not get discouraged. These are excellent for giving confident readers and extra, small, push.

B. Wiseman – Morris the Moose is a lovable, underrated character. These books are usually easy to find. They are almost always available at the library simply because they are often overlooked.

Should you have others you would add to the list, please share! We all need to know what else is out there.

Here’s to hoping that I can follow in these author’s footsteps and find that perfect balance. The year is almost over, surely it is possible. Having said that, the year is almost over so why bother?! Hmmmmm…

10 Books to Help Cultivate Gratitude

Growing up outside of North America, the traditional Thanksgiving day was not something often celebrated in my home or community. The pumpkin pie versus apple pie, or turkey versus ham, or sweet potatoes versus mashed potatoes debates were meaningless to me. Equally foreign to me were the hours of either playing or watching American football after the meal, or the time spent searching store ads for the best deals on the ironically timed biggest shopping day of the year the next day, or the agony of eating turkey 653 ways for the next 7 days. While I learned very little about the traditions and celebrations of this particular holiday, I learned quite a lot about being thankful.

When I think of Thanksgiving, I do not associate it with the aforementioned things. I think of my mother. With my mom, gratitude, not cleanliness, was next to Godliness. The worst sin you could commit in her house was to be ungrateful, something I was an awful lot as a child. So much so, that by my 4th grade year she decided drastic measures were required. With plenty of advance warning to curb my ungrateful ways, she explained to my sister and me that if we did not start to say “thank you,” we would be making all of our own meals for 4 days. Being the brilliant, angelic child that I was (cough, cough), I called what was obviously my mother’s biggest bluff yet (ignoring the fact that my mother never bluffed). I kept my “thank yous” sealed in the vault of an otherwise big mouth. Surprisingly to no one but me, that evening I was told that starting tomorrow, we would be cooking all our own food for the rest of the week. As usual, my sister suffered the consequences of my stupidity. And so began one of my greatest lessons learned. Over the course of the next few days, my sister and I ate some truly disgusting food, missed one pretty sweet dinner out, and bonded over our mutual suffering. We also learned to be loose and free with the “thank yous” and are better people for it.

I would argue that there are very few other things one human can do for another that are as mutually beneficial as expressing genuine gratitude. Cultivating habitual expressions of thankfulness changes how you, personally, see the world and the people in it. But, more than just effecting you, it also changes the experiences of those around you. The “hold the door” scenario turns from being an awkward obligation to a kind human connection when a “thank you” is given. The “stop at a parking lot entrance to let someone in” scenario turns from annoyance boarding on road rage to a kind human connection when a nod and an overly articulated silent “thank you” is given. The “I have something I need to say to you” turns from being a friendship straining incident to a kind human connection when a “thank you for caring enough to tell me this” is given.

Everyone wins.

As we, here in the United States, start preparing for Thanksgiving next week, I am not only mindful of all the things in my life to be thankful for, I am also reminded to continue forming the habit of communicating gratitude everyday. And reminded to make sure my children do the same. Here are some books to help with just that:

May our “thank yous” be as free flowing as the ice cream on our pie!

Guest Blogger: Mysterious Benedict Society

Hello everyone, I am writing to tell you that the Mysterious Benedict Society books are very, very enjoyable, must read, can’t-put-down books. When I was reading them I felt as if I was right there in the story. You know the feeling, right?

The first book of the trio, The Mysterious Benedict Society, is about two girls and two boys. They are brilliant and creative kids, who have a lot of potential. They are enjoyable characters and are really fun to learn, think, and read along with. Even though it is only the beginning of their story, it is still an amazing book!

The second book of the trio, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, is a very good, spur-of-the-moment book. As you follow the characters through the story of their second year together, you will find that not only do you fall in love with reading about them, but you also become more curious about what will happen next. As you may know, that is what makes books so hard to put down.

The third book in the trio, The Mysterious Benedict society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma, is a cutting edge story that I wish could go on forever! It is an amazing third book for the trio and it shows how far the characters have come from book one. I have so much thanks for the final and best book of the series, that it cannot be fully expressed in words, but simply I really, really, really loved the Mysterious Benedict Society series, but mainly The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

There is so much more I wish that I could say, but I will not spoil anything at all. In conclusion, I really, really enjoyed reading The Mysterious Benedict Society. Thank you Trenton Lee Stewart!!!!