Research is very specific regarding the 5 pillars of reading, with the first pillar being phonemic awareness. This is the ability to hear and manipulate individual phonemes (sounds). Phonological awareness includes this ability, but it also includes the ability to hear and manipulate larger units of sound, such as onsets (the beginning sound of a word) and rhymes (the vowel or vowel and consonant ending of the word) and syllables. Basically, this means children understand that sounds make words. There are 45 phonemes in the English language, and with those 45 sounds we make close to 1,000,000 words! Pretty impressive.
When children learn to manipulate those 45 sounds using their auditory modality they are ready to learn to read. If the child does not naturally develop phonological and phonemic awareness, and they are never given direct instruction in this area but are instead just given the letters first – learning to read may be one of the hardest things they will ever do. This is because reading really begins with the ears, not the eyes, and the phonology gap is one of the reasons illiteracy rates go up.
One of the earliest hallmarks of phonological awareness is the ability to recognize rhymes. Rhyming recognition means that if someone says two words with a different beginning sound but the same ending sound or sounds, such as “tree” and “free” or “sack” and “hack,” and the child recognizes that the endings are the same, this signals that the child has reached one of the first phonological milestones.
Rhyming production is the next step on the reading continuum, and I am saving that for another day. But, for parents, grandparents, and other adults with motive and opportunity to provide as much as possible to children in the way of exposure to rhyming recognition, nothing is better than a great rhyming book. You may now unfasten those seatbelts.
“Good Night, Baddies” by Deborah Underwood and illustrated by Juli Kangas, gives our little listeners a delightful story about the “baddies” of fairy tales. The giants, trolls, dragons, and wolves we all listened about as children, and got delightful shivers from, are portrayed as merely your ordinary fearsome creatures who need to stop being bad for the day and just get ready for bed. The story takes our baddies through the customary night time rituals (brush teeth, wash face, put on PJs, etc.)
Clearly, the values of this book are numerous. The illustrations are wonderful for children to help them develop the ability to language-label all the parts of the picture for vocabulary development. And many of those parts are references to the various fairy tales common to our culture.
We might never consciously think about how often these references creep into our conversations or are found in our reading, but without knowledge of fairy tales, full comprehension of adult text may not be possible. If someone is described as being “as rich as Midas” and the reader never head of King Midas, a deeper understanding of the text is lost. Thus, this book can serve several functions. It can be read many times for the story, the rhymes, the vocabulary development, and finally as a road map to all the wonderful fairy tales that will enchant and delight those little listeners. Albert Einstein once said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Go Albert!
To encourage an early love of fairy tales, and books in general, we must make sure the little listeners develop an appropriate sense of print it is important to not only maintain exposure but also make sure they know the value of a book. “The Highest Mountain of Books in the World” by Rocio Bonilla begins this aspect of the reading journey very smoothly.
Lucas, the cute little main character, wants to fly. From his earliest days in the pram, Lucas has imagined himself soaring in the sky with the birds. He tries to make his own wings, asks for wings for Christmases and birthdays, and jumps higher and higher on his bed trying to catch a thermal. Alas, nothing. But then his mother tells him there are other ways to fly and gives him a book. This is where our story really takes off. Lucas is transported to places as far away as east of the sun and west of the moon – all through books. And the books stack up. And Lucas doesn’t notice because he has been transported. I am not giving away the ending – but it is a charming and enchanting read.
But we are not done yet! This is because the illustrations on each page take us to a different fairy tale. This is a book to go back to again and again – in between reading the other stories each page references. During those repeat reads, I have been delighted to see my little listeners suddenly jump up with recognition of an illustration and retell that story in detail. Then ask me to read it again! I get lots of mileage out of this book.
Continued support for these little listeners to become readers includes “A Child of Books” by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. Jeffers and Winston have used a very simple story line to serve as a spring-board for further reading. I counted more than 40 references to children’s classics in the illustrations. Interestingly, these illustrations are not the typical colorful pictures we associate with children’s books. Rather, the bulk of the picture is comprised of text. A wave of “Swiss Family Robinson,” a twisted path of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” and mountain of “Peter Pan and Wendy” are just three examples of text made picture. Once again, the book becomes the map for more reading.
But, back to rhymes. Nancy Tillman, author of “You and Me and the Wishing Tree” uses her new book to send the message to the little listener that happy time spent together between parent and child means that he or she is loved. When a child has the attention of the reader and is in a comfortable, safe, and secure place that child will associate listening and reading with very happy, loving memories. Tillman’s book gives the rhymes we want to practice, the illustrations to spark a sense of magic, and the message of love by time spent together. Read on dear parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Keep the love of adventure through reading strong in our next generation.
Elaine Holden of Peterborough is a nationally recognized expert in the diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia. She is the director of The Reading Foundation and senior lecturer at Rivier College Graduate School of Education.