Between the lines: The joy of book series

I am an advocate for parent-child reading, so my children are in the habit of bringing books to grown-ups for them to read out loud. In the past year, my eldest daughter has started to take books from our bookshelf and read the words silently to herself.

And then one day, I heard her reading Maurice Sendak's One Was Johnny to her younger sister. The sight warmed my heart: she held her sister on her little lap the same way I hold them when I read to them. Only then did I discover that she reads quite well on her own.

Her strong reading skills make school life a little easier. For example, rather than trying to memorise the letters comprising a vocabulary word, she is aware of words that don't quite look right when spelled incorrectly. Solving maths questions don't confuse her because she is able to pick out the needed hints to determine what is required.

To prepare her for Grade One in September, our reading strategy has evolved into book series. I will read aloud the first chapter, to introduce the characters and give them life through animated reading using different voices. Then I leave the rest of the chapters and other books in the series for my daughter to read at her leisure. Book series are helpful tools for developing literacy skills because they often use repeated vocabulary words.

My daughter has happily graduated from Mo Willems' Elephant & Piggie series of short, repetitive sentences accompanied by wildly funny illustrations. I have devoted so much column space to Willems in the past few years, that I have nothing to add except: if you have a child between the ages of three and six, you must pick up any one of the almost two dozen books in the series. These are exponentially more enjoyable than "The cat sits on a mat" types of first readers' books.

For beginning readers, reading well is more important than reading extensively. This summer, I hope my daughter will read over and over the two series that we are enjoying.