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Bob Books

Publisher: Scholastic Inc. Author: Bobby Lynn Maslen Review last updated: 2009

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These sets of beginning readers are phonetically organized with controlled vocabulary, yet the stories are more interesting than many other such readers. There are 12 small books in each set. The sets begin with My First Bob Books: Pre-Reading Skills and My First Bob Books: Alphabet to prepare a child for reading.

The next five sets are the actual readers that will correlate with many phonics programs. Set 1: Beginning Readers concentrates on short-vowel words. The second set of 12 slightly longer books, Set 2: Advancing Beginners, continues with short vowel, consistent words, adding double consonants, blends, endings, some sight words and longer stories. Set 3: Word Families adds longer words and suffixes. Set 4: Compound Words adds sight words and compound words. Set 5: Long Vowels adds long vowel words.

Illustrations are simple black-and-white line drawings that children can imitate and color, and both the stories and drawings have an appealing child-like character. Teaching instructions are short and simple. These readers will work with any orderly phonics program.

Listen and Read sets each include an instructional audio CD plus four stories from the correlating Bob Books set.

Added to the line in 2010 are two sets of Sight Words readers, one for kindergarten and one for first grade. Rather than a substitute for a phonetic approach, these two series support a phonics approach while introducing sight words. Both sets have ten readers plus a set of thirty colorful flashcards with a sight word on one side and an illustration from the stories on the reverse. Both sets use only short vowel words with a few exceptions. The kindergarten set includes "she," "fly," and "home" as sight words, even though these might be sounded out phonetically once the concepts have been taught. The first grade set includes sight words suck as "like" and "before." But a few other words used in the readers such as "they" and "pancakes" seem more difficult than some of the selected sight words. You can always teach your child these other words as sight words if you so choose.

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