Part of a series to introduce each genre, written by the category chair.
Last year, as the newbie, I was quite *ahem* straight-laced and literal with my category description. I felt so 6×9 … so traditional chapter-y. So, dare I say it? Easy to read. This year I’m going totally sophomoric!
It is what our readers want! Power to the new readers!
- The illustrations aren’t word decoders, they’re sight gags and sketches and real pictures of stuff.
- Readers like big type because it takes up more space on the page, not because they need glasses!
- Best of all, they can count the number of pages in a chapter on one hand!
Have
you gotten a sense of the readers for this category? They are
elementary-aged kids who are building their reading skills. The books in
this category can hook them on reading and the best ones turn them into
bookworms for life.
Our
category ranges from the books that have some form of “read” on the
cover to the short, illustrated chapter stories that prepare them for
middle grade material. Easy readers are pretty, well, easy to recognize.
With short chapter books it gets a little more complicated. Sometimes
the plot suggests we need to push it to middle grade … or sometimes it
needs to move over to us. Nominate the book where you think it best fits
and the Category Chairs will take it from there!
It
isn’t always easy trying to decide the best reader is for a nominated
book, but we’re up for the task. We’ll do anything to help you create a
bookworm!
–Terry Doherty