I Want to Be a Reader!

by Mark Powers, Maria Montag BFA (Illustrator)

Overview

A simple celebration of a major milestone: learning to read! It will take a lot of hard work: learning the letters, turning the pages, saying the words. But that hard work will pay off—maybe sooner than this little boy thinks! The story ends with a hopeful message to toddlers that someday, they can be readers too.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936669554
Publisher:	blue manatee press
Publication date:	04/04/2017
Pages:	14
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 3 Years

About the Author

Percussionist Mark Powers resides in Portland, Oregon and is often an Artist-in-Residence at schools around the country. Regularly found writing both text and musical notation, Mark focuses on literacy with his students and loves any opportunity to be a "reading buddy." Maria Montag is an artist from Cincinnati, OH.

Editorial Reviews

"A gentle way to encourage little ones to want to read." —Alice Toepel, Winnebago County Literacy Council, Oshkosh, WI

"Compelling, brief narrative accompanied by brightly colored, descriptive illustrations draw the young board book reader into the story with ease . . . Children will love paging through their own board book about reading their first book." —Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher

2017-05-01
A little boy learns to read.A black boy sits on a big comfy chair, looking at the book in his lap. "I wish I could read," he says, and thus begins this board book. Letter by letter and word by word the boy pieces together the book, proud of his accomplishment by book's end. The book's intentions are good, but like so many books about the magic of reading, the story is bland. The child's determination is appealing, but the highly conceptual images (the boy appears four separate times in one spread that has him interacting with giant alphabet blocks and in another struggles to turn the pages of a giant picture book) provide little reality to anchor child readers not yet ready for metafictive outings. Since the pictures are therefore difficult to decode, there is little left beyond the "reading is fun" message—a message that is undercut by the fact that this book may not, in fact, be all that much fun for toddlers not ready for the images. The book's heart is in the right place, but unfortunately its presentation is not. (Board book. 2-3)

Kirkus Reviews