The book is for developing readers, so my 4 year old who needs stimulating with more words and pictures. The book itself is 4 short stories: My mum is mad / The new babies / I wanted to be / bouncing basketball. The book is beautifully illustrated and makes your child want to look at the pictures and see what is going on (which my son isnt usually interested in) in order to assist with their reading. The stories are about 8 pages each with a sentance on each page. The stories are real fun, and I like hearing my son put expression into his reading, which these stories seem to naturally encourage.

My favourite story is "I wanted to be".... its just fun... as is the rest of the book.

Well worth paying a couple of quid for. And I am getting more books in this series to accomany my sons reading at school. He actually read this one to his teacher today instead of his "school book". A great buy!


A fabulous way to start pre-schoolers reading   December 31, 2001
 7 out of 9 found this review helpful

Four fun stories to stimulate young pre-readers' imagination. The 4th story in the book "Where's the magician?" has a hunt-the-hat theme as a little extra to accompany the story. All 4 stories are well thought through to appeal, even the chicken pox story! Excellent value for money.


Excellent for gaining confidence in reading   April 8, 2001
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Four short stories all related to possible events in everyday life. All the sentences are variations on the same theme so readers can gain confidence and take in what they are reading. I liked the message of optimism in the stories too.


Attractive and achievable collection of stories   October 19, 1998
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

This is the first book in Level Two, which takes the reader up to early independent reading. Level One is for beginning readers. These are look-say books, but the vocabulary is decipherable for phonics readers too. Ladybird also have phonics readers if you wish to combine both approaches. Each smal book contains several small stories, with a few poems in the series as well. My son enjoyed using these books at age 5, and enjoyed the feeling of achievement he got from working his way from book to book.

His English is adequate, but he needed more exposure to books at a similar level before he was able to tackle Level Three. A child who can read Level Three books is ready for easy independent reading.

Throughout the series, stories are pretty plot-based, and easy to understand. Some reading series have a lot of social/language-based humour which was very hard for my son to grasp, since he has grown up outside an English-speaking community.

This series has been a valuable tool in teaching my sons to read. Our younger son is currently working on Level One books.