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Wondering which books to read to your child? Welcome to this wonderful 10 weeks long project of #MondayMorningReviews where Shital Choudhary, a passionate storyteller & a mom herself, shares children’s book reviews every Monday! The age group for these books is 0-4 years. This review series will help you choose the best books for your baby / toddler / preschooler / kindergartener. This week’s pick is Phonics Story Time Library. Read on this full book review. 

Book: Phonics Story Time Library (6 in 1 stories)
Publisher: Shree Book Centre
Age: 6 months +
Recommendation: Strong

Learning Phonics the fun way is the aim of the book. So basically it is for pre-primary school kids (Age 3.5+) learning Phonics.

Then why am I recommending it for 6m+ babies?

Well, because my reasons for buying this book were completely different from what is supposed to be the aim of this book. I bought this book when I didn’t know what the word ‘Phonics’ meant.

I bought this book because it had –

• silly simple fun stories, with JUST ONE sentence on each page
• big fonts

You see? 

I was looking for books for my then 8-10 month old.

So we enjoyed each story of the book as it is, without caring about learning sounds and for next 4 years post buying!

It’s a progressive concept book (which I realized much later when I learned about Phonics along my parenting journey). Let’s look at a few sentences from a story called ‘Chippy and Chuck’ to showcase how the story and learning progress.

Page 1: Chippy was a chicken

Page 2: One day, Chippy was munching chestnuts when someone said:
Page 3: “What a charming Chicken you are!”
Page 4: Chippy looked up and saw a smart Fox.

……story goes on to describe this cunning fox luring chippy to come to dinner with him promising chocolate and chips and cherry-pie etc. Naive chippy thinks fox is kind. Just then Chippy’s best friend Charlie the Chimp arrives there and chases the fox away, scolding Chippy on being so foolish.

Simple, isn’t it. A good message too (though that’s not the aim). You can notice lots of ‘Ch’ digraph words and other sound based words too.

You can start reading out these stories to your tiny tot and keep on doing so, till the child is about 3-4 years old when you or the school introduce Phonics, sounds and Digraphs. At which stage the child will be able to (without any provocation) tell you .. “look mumma, it’s Ch/Sh/Ou/ng etc. digraph!”