What has Austin been reading lately?

I updated my Learning to Read page with some good books that can be checked out from our local library here in Louisville. Also, we recently bought an easy to read Bible storybook that has been fun to work through with Austin.

Austin is doing so well with his reading lately. It's amazing how quickly a child can progress to harder books. We have bought a few early reader books, mostly from used bookstores for 50 cents or from Goodwill, but most of the books Austin uses are from our public library. Since November, I have been going to the library no less than twice a week to pick up stacks and stacks of early reader books. Some of them I pick out from the shelves, but mostly I search the online catalog and reserve them from the comfort of my personal computer. There are about a dozen library locations here in town, and they will locate any book I reserve from any of said locatiosn and send it to my local library for free. Then I just go to the checkout counter, present my library card and they hand over the big stack of books I reserved. It's so easy!

When Austin first started to read, I was so overwhelmed when I went to the early reader section of our library because there were hundreds of books to choose from. Most of them were too hard for Austin, and I didn't know an easy way to figure out which books would be good for him as a very early reader.

Our children's librarian, Barbara, gave me a bit of helpful advice. She said that there isn't really a standard system of reading levels- "Level 1" for one publisher might mean something different than "Level 1" for a different publisher. So, she said to browse around until I found the perfect book for Austin's reading level, then search online for other books in that same series. I have listed some of the best series for new readers on my Learning to Read page if you are interested, or if your child hasn't started to read, just bookmark me :)

Actually, I just got on the online catalog a few minutes ago and reserved like 20 Mo Willems books for Austin. It's a good thing you can check out up to 99 books at a time because we are certainly checking out our fair share of books these days!

Have I ever mentioned how much I love our public library system here in Louisville?!