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My First Steps Into Reading is a great series for introducing your young child to the letters of the alphabet! Each book in the series focuses on one letter and there is a cute little boy or girl character called “Little (insert letter)” who is the primary focus. This character has a box that he or she wants to fill with objects beginning with their letter. The story uses pictures and words in the sentence structure helping the early reader make the connections between the word and the item.

My three year old likes these books because they are very colorful and simple to read. He can help “read” by telling me the things he sees in the illustrations–or when I point to the picture that is in the sentence, he can give me the word. These are great books for adding into our pre-school curriculum as we are studying just one letter per week. 

I love that the writing is fairly large which makes it easy to point out the letters that certain words start with. I usually have my son find all the words that start with the letter we are reading about, having him put his finger on the letter that matches. I also like that the handful of objects that are used to  fill each of the character’s boxes are repeated several times in the story. The repetition is another thing that makes these books so great for the early reader. Once the story is completed there is also a final two page spread that includes even more objects that start with whatever letter is being taught.

I recommend these books because they work so well with tot school, preschool and even Kindergarten curriculum. They are easy to read–an older K-3rd grade sibling would be able to read them to the younger sibling with little to no help. Because there is so much repetition and inclusion of photos in the reading, the littles will be able to start chiming in with the reading after just one or two read thrus. Soon they will be able to thumb through and “read” it all to themselves.

Find It In Your Library!

• Book Series: My First Steps to Reading
• Author/Illustrator: Jane Moncure (Author), Linda Hohag (Illustrator)
• Publisher: Grolier Books (1984, 1991)
• Format: Picture Book, Hardcover
• Genre: Juvenile Fiction