Fred Read the Red Book

July 22, 2002
PreS-K-These titles look at words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings. They have a large font and no more than five words per page (with the exception of the first page, which contains a full definition of homophones). The words in Harry (hay/hey, heard/herd, higher/hire, hole/whole, hi/high, etc.) will be familiar to most four- and five-year-olds, while several of the examples in Fred may be new to youngsters that age (raise/rays, root/route, rains/reins). Both books have above-average, full-color, up-to-date photographs demonstrating the words. Indexes include phonetic spellings of the nouns, proper nouns, and verbs used in the texts. One can't help but wonder who these books are for. Are homophones really being taught, or even introduced, to preschoolers? These titles seem like pages from a language-arts text or workbook and are not books that most preschool and kindergarten children would choose to read.-Peg Glisson, Mendon Center Elementary School, Pittsford, NY

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