Easy Readers- Juvenile Corner

Hiya everybody, 

This reading log for the juvenile corner will be focusing on Easy Readers.  An easy reader is a book that supplements the reading skills a child is taught in school.  Which is why these books usually are leveled by numbers or letters.  Depending on the publisher of the easy reader series, there are different levels within that series.  Across the different publishers, easy readers are not made to be universal!

You will find 6 easy readers reviewed down below from varying publishers of varying levels.  The easy reader books will be listed in alphabetical order just like they have been in the other reading logs posted here.  On the reviews, I included the guided reading level (in addition to the age range), I felt that the reading level was helpful to include since these are easy readers.  There was only one book that I read that did not have any major awards attached to it and that was the non-fiction book.  It was very difficult to find a children's non-fiction boo that won an award.


Hi Fly Guy!
Written and Illustrated by Tedd Arnold
Published by Scholastic, 2005 
Category: Easy Reader, Boy oriented
Major Awards Won: Theodor Seuess Geisel Honor Book in 2006
Age Range: 4-8; Guided Reading Level I
Pages and Spreads: 32 pages, 3 spreads

With it's humor and wit, Hi Fly Guy! tells the story of how a boy named Buzz, adopts a fly as his pet.  It has 3 chapters, white backgrounds and large typeface.  The story is simple and the words are high frequency sigh words.  The sentences were also short.  What I liked about the story was that it was funny.  Something else that I liked about the story was in terms of the text and the illustrations.  Arnold incorporated the illustrations as action words into the text.  The illustrations had a cartoon-ish vibe to that and they were done with softer colors.  I felt that the age range from Scholastic was off a little bit.  I didn't feel that this book would have been good for age 4.  I felt like that was a little too young.  I said that this book was boy-oriented because of Buzz.




I am Helen Keller (Ordinary People Change the World)
Written by Brad Meltzer and Illustrated by Christopher Eliopoulos
Published by Dial Books for Young Readers, 2015
Category: Children's Biography, Non-fiction
New York Bestseller Series
Age Range: Grades 1-2; Guided Reading Level O
Pages and Spreads: 40 pages, 8 spreads





If anyone has watched Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum on PBS, then you may or may not know that the show was based on the biography series Ordinary People Change the World by Brad Meltzer?  I am Helen Keller is a book from Meltzer's Ordinary People Change the World series.  Telling the story of Helen Keller, Meltzer tells Keller's story as if Keller was a young child.  The book is a biography for children, focusing on the main points of Keller's life but in light of that fact, I found this book to be very wordy.  There was a lot of text on the pages, thus resulting in a lot of words. I was looking at the book less within the publisher's age range and more within the reading level and the information that it contained.  With help, I feel that a child would be able understand the material- I just think that unless the child was a strong reader, they might need to have an adult read it to them.  There were many lines and the typeface was not bold, nor was it large.  A feature that I thought was unique to the book was that it included the alphabet in Braille.  By adding the alphabet in Braille, it added a way for the reader to interact more with the story.  At the end of the book, there were real photos of Helen Keller and it included her timeline.  






I See a Cat
Written and Illustrated by Paul Meisel
Published by Balzer + Bray, 2016
Category: Easy Reader, Limited Vocabulary Book
Major Awards Won: Theodor Seuess Geisel Honor Book in 2018, Kirkus Review Starred Review
Age Range: 4-8; Guided Reading Level A
Pages and Spreads: 32 pages, 9 spreads

I See a Cat by Paul Meisel is a very much a limited vocabulary easy reader.  It matches it's guided reading level and it matches the age range provided by the publisher.  The story focuses on a dog and what the dog sees when it looks out the window and it told in sentences that are, for the most part, made up of 3 words.  The dog sees a cat, a bird and a squirrel.  Then the dog sees a boy when he comes home from school.  The illustrations were cute and very colorful, you could that were helping to tell the story.  There wasn't any white space on the pages.  The text was written in white or black, depending on the color of the background and it was a larger but it wasn't bold.  I didn't care for this book so much.  I felt like the story just ended abruptly and the information in the book itself was purely to tell the reader what the dog was seeing on each page; some pages didn't have text.   


Mr. Putter & Tabby Turn the Page
Written by Cynthia Rylant and Illustrated by Arthur Howard
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014
Category: Easy Reader
Major Awards Won: Theodor Seuess Geisel Honor Book in 2015
Age Range: 6-9; Guided Reading Level J
Pages and Spreads: 40 pages, 6 spreads

With it's 5 chapter, Mr. Putter & Tabby Turn the Page is a easy reader that's set up like a chapter book.  The background of the pages are white for the most part (there are times that there are color washed behind the text).  The text is black and large but there isn't a bold typeface.  The pages do not exceed having 6 lines of text on them, when the sentences are longer.  The illustrations are colorful and they do help to tell the story.  The words that are used, are easy to read and to understand.  I do agree with the age range on this book.  I felt that story had length that would make it appropriate for a child older than 6 and I thought that the story was structured well.  I like the chapters, because they offered the ability to take a break.


Oops Pounce Quick Run!
Written and Illustrated by Mike Twohy
Published by Balzer + Bray, 2016
Category: Children's Picture Books, Alphabet book, Easy Reader, Limited Vocabulary
Major Awards Won: Theodor Seuess Geisel Honor Book in 2017
Age Range: 5-7; Guided Reading Level F
Pages and Spreads: 32 pages, 2 spreads

Oops Pounce Quick Run! is a picture book that tells a story using the alphabet, that also falls under the category of being an easy reader.  Twohy's book is a fun take on using the alphabet in a such a way that tells a story.  Each page has one word starting that letter in the alphabet, so it read from A-Z.  Twohy's illustrations help to tell the story.  The background on all the pages is white and the typeface is bold and large.  The illustrations are simple and anything in the background of the illustrations are done in black and white with bold lines.  The dog and the mouse are colored and the capital letter on each word is colored as well.  I can see why this book was a 2107 Theodor Seuess Geisel Honor Book!  I liked how creative it was.  I agree with the age range given by the publisher- I feel like it matches with the story. I just thought that it might be a little too immature for someone who's age 7.


Penny and Her Marble
Written and Illustrated by Kevin Henkes
Published by Greenwillow Books, 2013
Category: Easy Reader, Girl oriented
Major Awards Won: Theodor Seuess Geisel Honor Book in 2014
Age Range: 4-8; Guided Reading Level J
Pages and Spreads: 48 pages, 0 spreads

I found that Penny and Her Marble was a chapter book easy reader.  The book told that story over the course of 4 chapters and it was a longer book at 48 pages.  I used this book as a girl oriented book because of Penny.  Penny and Her Marble told the story of young mouse, Penny and the marble she found on the front lawn of Mrs. Goodwin.  There is small pictures that help to tell the story but there story lacks any spreads.  The background of the pages is white and at most, there were 9 lines to a page.  I think that Henkes is a wonderful artist, so I really enjoyed all of the illustrations in the story (including the little mice in the basket!).  They were colorful and they did a nice job of supplementing the story.  The grade range on this book is very very wide.  According to Scholastic, it's pre-k to k, grades 1-2.  I actually don't agree with this!  When I was reading it, I felt like the story was more identifiable to an older child, because of how it talks about finding an item and claiming it as your own without asking.  There is a sense of guilt that's presented in this story that I don't think a small child would be able to understand.  To me, this story is more appropriate for a child in grades 1-2. 

Until next time... Happy reading!
- Jillian