By Anita Mullick
The team at Little Learners Love Literacy invited me to reflect on my favourite book that I wrote for the new decodable nonfiction series, Little Learners, Big World. That’s kind of like asking to choose a favourite child – we shouldn’t have favourites, right? But, from the diverse brood, a few titles have jostled their way to the front of my mind, vying for my authorial affection and the coveted position of number one.
Stage Plus 4, Raff's Jazz Tips
How about Raff’s Jazz Tips, with its cheeky and colourful personality? When I looked at the disparate collection of ‘double letter ending’ words in the LLLL scope and sequence, I was scratching my head as to how to draw these words together into a seamless package that would deliver both phonic and topic knowledge. Gradually, like musical notes floating off a score, words started to emerge and gather themselves into a jazz-themed word cloud. One of the picture books in my kids’ bookshelf, Hello Ludo by Nicola Slater (published by Nosy Crow), had a cute, jazzy zebra character that popped into my head in all its technicolour glory. Jazz zebras are cool, I thought, but not as cool (or decodable) as jazz cats! So the idea of a photographic book about jazz with a cheeky feline interloper called Raff was born.
Stage 5, Golf for Kids
Or maybe Golf for Kids, the fun sibling who’s a ‘wiz’ at celebrating the simple joys of life: a club, a coloured ball and some gnarly miniature obstacles? Finally, a chance to create something about one of my sporting passions! (Am I dull? Not at all!) Sadly, in my mini-golf exploits to date, I’m not sure I’ve managed to successfully apply the advice for when the ball goes out: “Do not stress and get cross!”. I think it’s time to turn to another member of the flock for some sage counsel …
Stage 6, Chill Out
Chill Out is the wise one of the bunch, giving us practical advice on how we can get calm and de-stress. What I love about this book is that it clearly shows that decodable texts can go beyond fiction texts. Here, we see that decodable texts can move convincingly into the realm of information delivery. Whether decodable texts are your focus or not, the content of Chill Out can be taken at face value and applied in the real world.
In these very turbulent times of a global pandemic, it’s nice to give our ‘little learners’ tools that they can use to exercise some control over the ‘big world’ – not by asking them to change their external circumstances, but by changing their responses to them. To be honest, this book isn’t just for little learners – we ‘big learners’ could all do with dancing a silly jig or retreating to our Zen Den!
So much as I love sax-playing Raff and his adorable tux in Raff’s Jazz Tips, and the homage to mini-golf that is Golf for Kids, I declare Chill Out not only the champ of chill, but the defender of decodability and boss of the brood!
Sample Book: You can be the first to read Anita's Stage 3 book - In The Net!
Click below to take a look at a sample flip book ....
Anita Mullick is a primary and early education author, publisher and editor. Anita enjoys the puzzle and the challenge presented by writing decodable books (read more here!) and has created a range of fascinating nonfiction for the Little Learners, BIG WORLD series working alongside Pip and Tim author Berys Dixon.