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Recently, I wrote a post about free printable reading materials for beginning readers.  But how about “real” books that don’t use up your ink (or your time to cut them)?

Here’s some that we have enjoyed:

The Bob Books:  I think these must be the most well known, classic phonics based readers.  I tried Set 1 with Madeline before she was really ready and it was just frustrating for her! So when she was really ready to take off with her reading, we jumped into Sets 2 and 3, which I was able to check out from the library. We also checked out set 4, but Madeline didn’t care for this set as much.  It was getting more difficult in different ways than the other materials we had been studying, so it was less of a good fit for us. These stories all feature black and white simple drawings.

Now I’m Reading series by Nora Gaydos: We really like this series a lot — it is probably our favorite early reader series.  Each set has either 10 or 5 books (definitely look for the 10 book sets — they are a much better deal!) with colorful pictures and fun stories. We were lucky enough to find two sets (a level one set and a pre-reader set) at a garage sale.  Madeline is ready for at least the level 2 sets, and it’s on my wish list of books I would like to buy for her, since our library does not carry them.

Dr. Maggie’s Phonics Readers: These are full color books that gradually increase in difficulty over the course of 24 books.  At our library, these come in a package of 4 books and a read-along CD.    If you consider these, be aware that Book 1 is kind of an anomaly in the series and is more sight-word or whole-language based than phonics based.  But after the first book they are more firmly phonics oriented. We found the read-along CDs to be somewhat annoying, though they did have some catchy tunes to go along with the stories.

Flip-a-Word: This is a really cute series of books we found at the library.  Each one covers about three word families and is perfect for beginning readers who are learning to blend initial sounds with a word family.

“Get Ready, Get Set, Read” Series“: This series of books published by Barron’s is similar to many other beginning readers, but is much more phonics-based than most I’ve looked at.  There are still some “sight words”, but not too many.  We found the linked title at a used book store, but I would guess that most of the books in this series would be equally useful.

“Sounds Like Reading” Series by Brian Cleary:  This phonics based series is one of Madeline’s favorites.  It uses word families and rhymes to teach various phonics skills.   Each page presents about three new words, then uses them in a sentence.

Are there other beginning reader series we should check out? Let me know!