"An Apple"
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After The Alphabet by Richard Ross Trafford Publishing
book review by Jenifer Kimble
This short, catchy, and appropriately illustrated book takes early learners on a simple but effective exploration of the alphabet. Guiding preschoolers through a series of two-word, two-letter sentence fragments, the book seeks to further the foundation early readers built by learning to identify sights and sounds of the alphabet. The left page on each spread is intentionally left blank so that readers may insert their own phrases, illustrations, etc.
This book has a sing-songy read making it easy to capture and keep the attention of its intended young audience. The associated illustrations are well done and while simple not at all crude but very eye catching instead reinforcing and sometimes helping with the phrase featured below. This book would represent step three in learning to read (following learning the alphabet then single word flash cards). It reinforces the "sight word" method being used in many pre-school and kindergarten classes across the U.S. and seeks to begin the process of reading comprehensions or stringing words together to form complete thoughts. Because the book is short, it would be a good choice to add to the nightly homework routine of early readers. Additionally, since the book doesn't tell a story that moves from page to page and instead features unrelated phrases, it could be mixed up to prevent children from memorizing it. For instance, you could start reading at the end or even in the middle and wouldn't break a cohesive story.