Meg and Greg: A Duck in a Sock

by Elspeth Rae, Rowena Rae, Elisa Gutiérrez (Illustrator)

Overview

A decodable book featuring four phonics stories specially designed to help children of all abilities overcome language-based learning difficulties.

Meg and Greg are hanging out for the summer doing what ten-year-olds do—helping an injured duckling, finding a lost pet fish, saving ranch animals from a wildfire and catching a wandering sloth!

A Duck in a Sock is the first book in the Meg and Greg series designed for shared reading between a child learning to read and an experienced reader. Inside you'll find four stories that introduce one new phonogram (a letter or combination of letters that represent a sound) in each story: the ck, sh, ch and th phonograms. Each story builds on the previous ones by including words with the phonograms already introduced. In addition, the series has special features to help a child with dyslexia or another language-based learning difficulty achieve reading success.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459824904
Publisher:	Orca Book Publishers
Publication date:	04/14/2020
Series:	Meg and Greg , #1
Edition description:	High readability edition
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.45(d)
Lexile:	490L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 8 Years

About the Author

Elspeth Rae has a BEd from Simon Fraser University and is a certified Orton-Gillingham teacher for children with dyslexia and other language-learning difficulties. Elspeth was diagnosed with dyslexia at age eight and received Orton-Gillingham instruction during her school years. As a certified teacher, she works as a literacy specialist in the public school system, where she teaches reading, spelling and writing to children ages five to thirteen. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her family.

Rowena Rae worked as a biologist in Canada and New Zealand before becoming a freelance writer and editor and a children’s author. She is the author of Chemical World and Upstream, Downstream in the Orca Footprints series, and co-author of the Meg and Greg series. Rowena writes both fiction and nonfiction from her home in Victoria, British Columbia.

Elisa Gutiérrez is an award-winning designer, author and illustrator. Her book Picturescape was short-listed for the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize, was honored by the Alcuin Society and was the subject of a scholarly paper by the renowned Dr. Lawrence Sipe. Elisa has designed over 100 books and specializes in book design for children. Born and raised in Mexico City, Elisa lives in Vancouver.

Editorial Reviews

There are many books focusing on leveled reading, but Meg and Greg: A Duck in a Sock is a series with a difference...The sharing of the reading between an experienced reader and the child allows for the inclusion of more complex text on the buddy reader's page and a lower reading level with a phonogram focus on the kid's page. This allows for a richer reading experience and a guided learning experience for the child. Highly Recommended.

CM: Canadian Review of Materials

The stories offer both flashes of humor and plenty of action to drive the instructional intent.

Booklist

A unique approach to high-interest texts for reluctant burgeoning readers, this book offers phonics fun wrapped in serious research-based success.

School Library Journal

This primer should appeal to phonics stalwarts and phonics learners...Art, drawn in a heavy ink line, helps readers focus on labeled objects and voice-balloon content.

Publishers Weekly

Brings new energy to the task of learning to read.

Kirkus Reviews

The stories offer both flashes of humor and plenty of action to drive the instructional intent.

Booklist

2020-02-09
High-interest, low-reading-level stories present a fun way to reinforce phonics skills for readers who need a boost.

Best friends Meg and Greg face tricky situations and daring adventures in several entertaining tales. Dilemmas range from replacing a sibling’s missing fish to helping ranch animals escape from a wildfire; they will hold readers’ interest as they create opportunities to bolster phonics skills. Each of the four segments contains episodic chapters in prose paired with comics-style panels, cartoon illustrations, and speech bubbles that will foster engagement and support reading development. Labeled illustrations and end-of-segment extension activities provide additional opportunities for practice centered on the specific phonogram (“ck,” for instance, or “sh”) highlighted in that section. These stories are geared toward emerging readers who are a bit older than the typical beginning reader and are thoughtfully designed to appeal to this older audience with eye-catching graphics and more-complex situations. This is Book 1 in a series intended for children just learning to read or readers with dyslexia and other learning difficulties, to be shared alongside a more experienced reader. Short explanations and strategies for each new phonogram introduced as well as plenty of helpful tips for using the book to support learning are included. Dyslexia-friendly features are integrated into the book. All characters present as white in the illustrations.

A carefully formatted book with supportive features baked in brings new energy to the task of learning to read. (glossary, tips) (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews