Book Handling Skills

As teachers and parents, we underestimate the many things a child learns when he or she is read to and has exposure to good books. For example, where the front of the book is–the orientation of the book–how to hold it right side up and open it from right to left, etc. The fact that print contains a message.
It takes children a while to catch onto this important idea and we who already read take it for granted. There is a difference between a picture and print. We start reading at the top and read down. We read the left page first. Each work has a beginning and end sound to it. Before long, a child learns that punctuation marks mean something such as a period means a full stop; a comma, a pause; quotation marks mean someone is speaking; etc. Children begin to notice the difference between capital and lowercase letters. I get very excited when the children start to "read" by opening a book and telling a story, often very accurately just by the pictures and their familiarity with the plot. It’s fun to purposely leave a word out when reading aloud and allow the children to fill in the blank. They will tell you if you skip something or leave something out. These books handling skills become a very important part of learning to read.

As we select books for our beginning readers, there are two aspects to keep in mind:
First, the format and second, the language.
When considering the format, a few lines are best and the print should be a nice size, conventional in style and punctuation. The story needs to be short.
The language in books for beginning readers should have repetitive patterns (as adults we may be bored to tears, but the children love it) and a predictable plot is very important. It’s also critical that the vocabulary is based on the child’s experiences with familiar objects, emotions, and language. The language should be natural and simple. The pictures must support the printed text.

Here are just five of my favorites:
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. & John Archambault
The Napping House by Audrey Wood
Ten in Bed by Mary Reese
There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly illustrated by Pam Adams
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr.