First on the spectrum is the book Ball by Mary Sullivan. This book is written for your earliest readers because there is only one word in the entire book... you guessed it ball. Most of the story is told through the humorous pictures and the punctuation included with the word ball. Ball is the story of a dog who loves to play ball. As soon as he wakes up he has is ball and is begging his little girl to throw the ball. When she has to go to school he is left alone and has no one to play catch with. He tries mom, the baby and the cat but no one wants to play. He takes a nap and dreams of catching the ball. Then finally the little girl gets home from school and they can play ball again. What is neat about this book is that anyone can read it because all it says is ball! My 21 month old loves this book and will bring it to us saying, "ball."
The next book on the spectrum is ironically also about a ball. A Big Guy Took My Ball by Mo Willems. Willems is no stranger to writing award winning book, but he really knocked it out of the park with this one. This book is for an early reader who has great knowledge of sight words and can use some other decoding strategies to figure out harder words, most first graders could probably read this by the middle of the year. In this Elephant and Piggie book Piggie was playing with a big ball when a big guy came and took it. Gerald wants to play the hero so he decides to go and get Piggie's ball back. Then he sees the big guy and he is BIG. Gerald gets scared and does not get the ball back for Piggie. While Piggie and Gerald and talking about how BIG this BIG guy is they hear a loud voice say, "EXCUSE ME." It's the big guy. It turns out the ball belonged to the big guy and he is sad because no one ever wants to play with him. Elephant and Piggie make the BIG GUY feel better by offering to play with him. This book not only teachers the concept of big and small but also about how to make others who are different feel welcomed. You will find out very quickly that if you read this one out loud children will love it and will be laughing out loud!
The Geisel Honor book on the spectrum is Penny and Her Marble by Kevin Henkes. This book is a short beginner chapter books, your child should be able to read this on his or her own by then end of first grade or beginning of second. You can see what a big difference there is between A Big Guy Took My Ball and Penny and Her Marble, children really develop in their reading during first grade.
In Penny and Her Marble Henkes takes Penny on yet another adventures (this is the third book so far in the Penny series). This time Penny is taking a walk and finds a marble in her neighbor's yard. She picks the pretty blue marble up and takes it home. Once she is home she feels guilty for taking the marble, thinking that it might belong to her neighbor. She could not eat dinner, she couldn't even eat dessert! That night Penny had bad dreams about the marble. The next morning she decided to take the marble and put it back in her neighbors yard. Just as she was turning around to go home her neighbor stopped her. Penny's neighbor wanted her to have the marble! Penny was so excited to get to keep the pretty, blue marble!
Hope you enjoy all of these great early readers!
Happy Reading!
Laura
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