Now I'm Reading Leveled Readers

I just purchased a set of leveled readers from Amazon, and I am so pleased with them! The set I bought is called Now I'm Reading, Level 1 Advanced, and comes with 10 leveled readers for beginners. Little Bean has not been excited at all about the Bob Books, so I went searching for something he could read himself, like the Bob Books, but with more interesting stories and more colorful illustrations. These readers, written by Nora Gaydos are perfect for our needs!

As soon as these came in the mail I showed them to Little Bean, and he was excited to look at them and start reading. He read through two books right away, and was quite possessive over the set, which told me he was excited about these books.
The set of 10 books comes in this nice little case that has a magnetic closure, and each book is slipped into a little clear pocket, almost like a CD case:

The set also comes with 40 matching stickers (4 for each story) that the child can place in the front cover of the book when they read a story independently. It's such a simple idea, but I had never thought of it, and Little Bean was very excited about this aspect of the readers. The set also comes with a guide book for parents which explains how you should introduce the stories, and that they get progressively more difficult as the stories go along.

Here's one of the books Little Bean read. See the illustrations? They kind of remind me of a the movie Ice Age:

This story was about a bear cub who sat on a piece of gum. When he finally was able to pull the gum off, he decided to eat it! Little Bean was actually giggling when he read this one.

In the back, the book provides reading comprehension questions and then an overview of what sounds and skills are required to read the story.

If you are looking for an alternative to Bob Books, or just more leveled readers, these are perfect! They were not expensive either--I paid $11.55 and chose free shipping. For those looking for readers that are appropriate as companions to 100 Lessons, Little Bean is 60% through 100 Lessons, and these readers were perfect for him--not too easy, and not too challenging.

I'm always looking for an example of the kind of text in leveled readers because it seems that many books that say they are phonics based really aren't appropriate for beginning readers. So here's a sample of the book Little Bean read today:

"The cub. The big cub. The big cub sits. The big cub sits on a rug. YUCK! The big cub sits on gum! The big cub sits on pink gum. The big cub tugs at the gum. The big cub tugs the gum off. Yum! Yum!"