Senior Lecturer and Head of the School of English Bruce Johnson

This is a great book for beginner readers. The book is mostly about different pets, but its main focus is really on phonics and sight words. Specifically, it helps students to practice short "e," short "o," and short "u." This is one of the many reasons I like this book. It has a focus on specific types of words to enhance that skill for the reader. It uses words such as pet and best throughout the story to give readers practice with the short "e." Another reason I like this story is the show more illustrations. Illustrations are extremely important for beginner readers. They provide readers with clues as to what they are reading and can even help students decode certain words they are reading. On one page, the context says, "This pet is a hat!" and in the picture, a hamster is on top of the main character's head. This clue can help the reader to identify hat in the sentence. A last reason I really like this book is that the words are very large. This is so helpful to beginner readers. With little words on the page in big letters, it helps students to focus on one word at a time and decode it. show less