Product Review: BOB Books: Set 1 Beginning Reader (Age 4 and up)
The 11th hint in Bobby Maslen’s 11 Hints for Teaching Your Child to Read is to, “Be sensitive to the child’s attention span and expect short practice times”. The BOB Books (BOBBooks.com) sets, part of parent team John and Bobby Maslen’s brainchild from the 1970s, are designed to build a child’s confidence of learning and loving to read. Set 1 begins with beginning readers and goes to more advanced reading in set 5 which focuses on long vowels. Set 1 is for the 4 and up crowd and introduces the very child-like illustrations of the BOB characters and simple 3 letter words and short sentences. There are 12 books in this set although the books are more like small pamphlets (I counted 12 pages, front and back, in book 1) designed to encourage your beginning readers to finish an entire book themselves.
The books themselves did not look like anything special until I started to look at the small details in the set and saw a great benefit for a parent who is involved in teaching their child to read. All alphabet letters are introduced in the set (with the exception of Q) and there are just five sight words introduced. The back of each book has talking ideas for parents to have with their child after they finish each book to help increase the child’s comprehension. Each book in the set focuses on specific beginning letter sounds that are listed at the beginning of the book called the ‘sounds/picture dictionary’. It includes an upper and lower case of each letter and an image and word that begins with that letter.
A fair warning is that the pictures in the book are quite simple and consistent throughout the books. The character Sam looks like a triangle. However, the pictures are whimsical and the index card inside the set indicates that the characters can be easily drawn by children. All in all, it is a perfect and inexpensive set for parents who want to be actively involved in helping their child learn to read.
Side note: There is a set of BOB Books for the even younger crowd called the Pre-Reading Skills (My First Bob Books) (My First Bob Books).
BOB Books: Set 1 Beginning Reader (Age 4 and up)
List Price: $16.99
Currently listed at Amazon.com for $11.55 as of 12/28/11
I love these books. My odest daughter Savanah started using them at her Montessori school when she was 4. The indroduce reading very slowly and appropriately, in my opinion. We also got those booksfor her home readings. I would really recommend these books!
Thanks so much for that excellent feedback, Karla. I am so glad the BOB books were a useful learning tool for Savanah. I appreciate you sharing!