Meg and Greg
The Meg and Greg series is appropriate for a child who has a solid grasp of the sounds made by all the individual consonants and by all the short vowels. The comic book/graphic novel type illustrations and thickness of the Meg and Greg books make them more appealing to older readers who are struggling to read than some of the more colorful, picture book style early reader books. There are 4 stories in each book, so they appear like a longer chapter book that older students might read, but each story is made of only 5 short chapters.
Decodable books encourage children to sound out words using reading strategies rather than guessing from pictures or predicting from other clues. Text is carefully sequenced to only include phonics skills that students have already been learning so students are practicing at the right level and build confidence in reading before they move on to the next skill. Each book builds on the one before it, introducing concepts that complement and reinforce what the students have already learned. Text is limited to one or two sentences to a page until readers are able to handle more complex stories with more text.
This unique series is designed for shared reading. A buddy reader—an adult or other confident reader—shares the reading with the child who is learning. The kid’s text appears on the right-hand page with the adult or buddy reader’s more difficult text on the left-hand page. The buddy text uses longer sentences, a wider vocabulary, and some language elements that the child reader has likely not yet learned. Readers can read the right-side pages only to read by themselves or can benefit from hearing a buddy reader reading with fluency and pronouncing more difficult words when they read together.
The books include "dyslexia-friendly" design features that some people find helpful for reading such as more white space between letters and lines of text, reduced contrast in the page and text color, and font that mimics handwriting.
For printable activities that go along with each of these books, visit the Orca Two Read website.