Ready to Read adds non-fiction and emerging readers will love it

The Ready to Read book series from Simon & Schuster are one of our favorite books for emerging readers. They’re jammed with color, are perfectly priced and have large-but not too large of a font size. If the font is too large then the inference is that it’s a baby book and they are not baby books. The reading level is labeled as perfect as a children’s book can be. From the front cover you can see what level the book is and on the back cover you can read a more detailed explanation about each of the levels so that readers can have something to aim for on the next level. We love these books. The only problem, until now is that there were no non-fiction titles.

They’ve solved this problem with If You Love Dolphins You Could Be and If You Love Video Games You Could Be. Each book has the same format of the Ready to Read books that parents have enjoyed for years, but with an educational, fun and non-fiction direction. Both of these books work and elementary school readers will enjoy the more ‘adult’ content matter.

Adult is all relative. We’re not talking about unicorns or superheroes here. The presentation is the same, but in these books we’re learning about a variety of careers that people can aspire to be. In If You Love Dolphins You Could Be has a detailed overview of three careers that involve dolphins or other sea life. On one page there is a glossary of some other sea based careers like an oceanographer, environmental lawyer, underwater archeologist and more.

For us these books are perfect. We have a 7 year-old that is a little slow in reading. He is able to read lots of sight words and some bigger words, but has trouble putting them together as he reads. He’s also behind, according to his teachers and that could impact his confidence. As a parent, we want him to read what he wants to read (which means more reading!), but we also would prefer it to be something educational. Call it the Trojan Horse approach to getting books in the hands of emerging readers.  

The price point for these books, relative to their colors and how much kids enjoy them is also a great value. The request for non-fiction books in the Ready to Read series was presented to the publisher by lots of educators and teachers. Like me, they loved the format of the books and how much kids love reading them, but wanted more educational options. At the end of each of these books is a graphic that announces that more books are coming. That is a great and needed thing. Kids love to dream about what they’ll do when they get big and there are thousands of options beyond the stereotypical firefighter, lawyer or doctor.