Children love predictable stories and text. Stories with repetitive text are a great way to involve children of all ages in the process of reading. It is not important when children are pre-schoolers to be able to read words accurately. Young children are extremely good at memorizing text. What is important is to kick start children's interest and love of books and reading. Predictable, repetitive text helps hook them in. I bet there aren't too many of us adults that can't chant, "Then I'll huff and I'll puff..." or "Run, run as fast as you can...". The authors of these classics were onto something! Hence these have been much loved stories for generations.
Stories such as Hairy McLary from the wonderful New Zealand author Lynley Dodd are much loved favourites because every page has an opportunity for children to contribute to the story telling/reading process. Joy Cowley, another fab New Zealand author, also writes many books with repetitive text. An example of this is her 'Mrs Wishy Washy' series. Joy Cowley writes many of the school beginning readers that you will become familiar with when you have school children who are learning to read.Yet another great New Zealand author is Joy Watson who writes the 'Grandpa' series (Grandpa's cardigan, shed, cat, slippers, shorts).
If you have titles that you can recommend please post their titles by clicking on the comments link at the bottom of this posting. We would love to hear from you.
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