Sergio Ruzzier’s 4 books about two best friends, nonstop Chick and logical Fox — Up and Down; The Party; The Quiet Boat Ride; The Sleepover—are a perfect series for a beginning reader.
Each book has 3 short Chapters that play on the title’s themes, filled with sight words, word blends, rhyming endings, basic punctuation marks. “Concepts About Print” are introduced smoothly and naturally in each story. The cheery watercolor art is in comic-like panels to help with the reading flow. Stories take place outdoors and indoors.
A wide variety of vocabulary to learn and use. A few examples:
Common words: love, book, tree, good, please, yes, show, dark, home, water, pond, box, soup
Action words: climb, caught, read, swim, plan, received, smooch, slurp
Compound words: snowflake, bookcase, shipwrecked, sunrise, sunset, bathroom, landscape, sleepover
Food words: chocolate cake, sprinkles, potato chips, onions, carrots, parsley, potatoes
Animals: grasshoppers, moles, frogs, chipmunks, squirrels, lizards, birds, mice
Exclamation words: SLAM, KNOCK, CRASH, TICK TOCK, THUD
New words to use in conversations after reading whenever you can: ladder, snowflakes, bookcase, meringue, plunder, pirate, captain, shore, portrait
Math words are everywhere in the book:Quantitative—numbers one-seventeen, million.Descriptive—forever, now, again, many, more, large, something, anything, enough, least, moment, almost, up, down
Ruzzier’s writing is subtle. Many of the stories don’t tell us ‘why’ Fox did or said something to help Chick,we can figure it all out for ourselves and even anticipate what might be said next. Nothing boring here.Chick is a literalist. Fox is logical, matter-of-fact, with wry wit.
Having a child follow along (track a few words at a time with your finger) when reading to help withword recognition and fluency. The stories model friendship at its best (similar to Lobel’s Frog and Toadseries). And every story is filled with humor. “I like chocolate cake more than life itself,” said Chick.
4 brilliant books to kickstart early reading for 5-6-year-olds. My new favorites.
