Ten Children Books For Daily Reading

Recently, I asked my friends and family for some advice. I asked them to send me ideas for books to read to my son. He's three-and-a-half, and he loves reading. A lot. As a former English teacher, one might think I would be thrilled about his love of literature, and I am. What I am not thrilled with is the titanic collection of mindless dribble I find in bookstores. The bookstore shelves are so frustratingly crammed full of lackluster texts for tots that it is nearly impossible to find the few pearls. Scan the list below for the generous suggestions and comments from parents in the know, as well as a few gems I've managed to cull from the crowded bookstore shelves.

Title: I Can Do It By Myself

Publisher: Western Publishing Company-A Golden Sturdy Book
I think all parents can relate to hearing these words. If you haven't heard them yet, you will soon. My super cool aunt raves about this book. She says it was one of our favorites when we were small, and now she reads it to our children. It's really simple to read and nicely illustrated.

2. Title: Amazing Grace

Author: Mary Hoffman and Caroline Binch

Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
This story about acceptance and confidence reveals a little girl who wants to play Peter Pan in her school play. One of her classmates says she can't because of her skin color. The little girl's grandmother then takes her on a journey and shows her the first African American prima ballerina in Swan Lake.

3. Title: Where the Sidewalk Ends

Author: Shel Silverstein

Publisher: HarperCollins
One of my best friends adores this book, "Emma and I both love this book. I can still, to this day, rattle off the entire poem, Sick (a two-pager) because it is so poignant, funny and lyrical. And now I have Emma singing through Ickle Me Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too. I love that she has taken to something I loved as a child."
I can also vouch for the success of this book in our home. I, too, adored this book as a child, and I partially credit Silverstein with my love for writing and reading poetry.

4. Title: Miss Spider's Tea Party

Author and Illustrator: David Kirk

Publisher: Scholastic
These books are known for their incredibly vivid and vibrant illustrations. Each page is a work of art. But it's also a story about letting go of preconceived ideas about people (and spiders.)

5. Title: Love that Dog

Author: Sharon Creech

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
This is another one of those fantastic poetry books. I love it myself; I love it for my son; I loved it when I taught poetry to my high school students. It's about a boy named Jack who is exploring poetry and trying to find his own inspiration, which he manages to find in his dog, Sky.

6. Title: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Author: Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault

Illustrator: Lois Ehlert

Publisher: Little Simon
I have to add that just today, when I picked my son up from school, a lot of the kids were circled closely around their teacher, entranced by the book she was reading to them--Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. This book offers welcome relief from the monotony of most ABC books.

7. Title: Barnyard Dance

Author: Sandra Boynton

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
This book was recommended by a friend of mine who is a mother and a writer, so she knows her stuff. "We have a rollicking good time sing-songing this lively rhyming board book. Elizabeth is six and we still love it, and now she reads it herself!" Another book, by Sandra Boynton, that we love in our house is Personal Penguin.

8. Title: Goodnight Moon

Author: Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd

Publisher: HarperCollins
A classic. This was on my list for sure and has been vouched for by nearly every parent who responded to my request for ideas. We have this book in Spanish, too, and we've read it so many times that it really doesn't matter which version we read anymore; Xander knows it so well.

9. Title: Toy Boat

Author: Randall de Seve and Loren Long

Publisher: Philomel Books
This is a new book that I think will become a classic. It's a great story about a little boat that gets separated from his little boy. The small boat is, at first, excited about his new freedom to sail in the huge lake, but he quickly encounters many big (and some scary) boats that caution him to "Move along!" It's a new twist on the old big kid/little kid stories, where eventually the little kid (er, boat) survives encounters with the big kids (boats) and returns home safely. Each glossy page is home to imaginative and vivid illustrations.

10. Title: Where the Wild Things Are

Author: and Illustrator: Maurice Sendak

Publisher: HarperCollins

How could I leave out this classic? I used to love this story, and now it is one of my son's favorites. We've been reading it for about two years, now, and he has every page memorized, but we all still love the story of the boy with the wild imagination. If you forgot about this one, it's time to go to the store.

Processing Speed Therapy For Eye - Maintenance and Reading Fluency

Fluency in reading involves the ability to read words at an automatic pace and the speed and ease used while reading. There is a high correlation between reading words per minute and accuracy. If a child is reading slowly and sounding out each word, the meaning of the text will be lost. Reading must be rapid and automatic to glean meaning and understanding. If a text is on a child's age and grade level the reading process should be automatic.

One common problem that causes slow reading is poor eye-position maintenance. A child must be able to fixate on a word long enough for recognition to take place. This problem can cause a child to take too long to read a word. A long duration time to recognize a word causes physical as well as reading fluency problems. The result of this problem may be: blurring, fatigue, nervousness, hyperactivity, rubbing or blinking the eyes. Reading problems may include: skipping words when reading aloud, slow reading, losing place while reading, reversals and avoidance of reading. The eye must focus on a word for approximately one-quarter of a second in the when reading. Processing training can increase the duration time of fixation on each word to one-sixth of a second, while still maintaining good recognition when reading.

Help for this condition can include a child pointing to the center of a word when reading. Due to common belief it is not detrimental when learning to read to point. Pointing can help stabilize the minuet movements the eye makes that can cause translocations of letters. Once a child can recognize words and fixate on them fast enough this practice will stop. There are other methods a parent can use to help improve the duration time a child focuses on a word. Flash cards can be used by holding up an age appropriate word for a 3 seconds and putting it down...then ask the child to recall the word. In addition, if a tiny dot is placed in the at the bottom middle of the word, the eye will be drawn to the dot and center of the word. This will stop any eye movement when fixating on the word. As the child improves shorten the time the child sees the card to 2 seconds and then 1 second to one-sixth of a second and eliminate the dot. This should be done with a wide variety of words the child is familiar with, such as an age appropriate spelling list. Word flashing devices may also be used such as a tachistoscope or visual computer programs. These programs gradually increase the speed that the words are shown. Visual and cognitive therapists, as well as optometrists in your area, may have some of the computer programs or other devices mentioned in this article.

In summary, for a child to read fluently with speed, comprehension and accuracy, the eye-position maintenance system must steady the image or word so that recognition can take place. Visual and cognitive processing also improves word recognition by improving visualization, visual memory, concentration, processing speed and other essential components of the reading process.

5 reasons reading Percy Jackson series

If you join us for a great number of your teen readers, we try to give the series of Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan. Here are five reasons that this series of books for children and parents label.

A first engaging and satisfying read for children and parents
In particular, the Percy Jackson books work not only for teenagers but also adults. I am in my mid-thirties and the series had me hooked, so I had read one by one, until I crossed the lineThe Last Olympian. The last two were particularly difficult to place, as the number was closer to its final conclusion.

According Wonderful Teen Role Models
Percy and his friends are great role models for young people who are adventurous, rebellious, but retains a sense of ethics and responsibility. They protect each other and have to save his eye on a target as big as the world!

Third Wonderful Teen Parent Connections
Percy is his single-parent mother (as hisFather is the God Poseidon) and to do the faith of Percy, which he feels is right. Percy contact when faced with a challenge, and offers advice, but rather build on, he knows how to do the right thing. This type of mother-child relationship is a welcome contribution to the popular teen literature.

Fourth powerful story, gets better with every book
There is a point in the third book The Titan's Curse, when the villain was dedicated to me on the rest of the series and I read thelast two books within 48 hours (had just better). The fit so perfectly revealed in history and all the notes left in the first half of the book finally made sense. The ability not to lose and is the reader's interest or lot is to the threads of history, in fact the work of an experienced writer.

Fifth Exposure to mythological archetypes
Obviously, references to Greek mythology shows, like Percy Jackson and his friends at Camp Half-Blood have all a greek God asParent. The reader surface, these statements should attract interest in classical mythological stories of ancient Greece. Readers more about the myths, the more you can read the story characters and motivations. has to be infused his story with these old archetypes Rick Riordan depth to its history and applied these old myths in a modern context, the two texts to live longer on the shelves.