2nd Grade Reading and Literature - A Review of The Granny Series
About Chapter Books
Once kids have mastered the basics of decoding text and have built a reasonable sight vocabulary, they generally move on to using chapter books. This is somewhere around 2nd grade, although many will not be ready for chapter books until 3rd grade, depending on their level of skill and ability to read at a speed fast enough to maintain fluency and comprehension. For younger readers, chapter books need illustrations to support the comprehension process, otherwise meaning will be lost. The chapters need to be short, as most 2nd grade readers do not maintain their attention on what they are reading about for very long. Chapter books at this level also need to be well written, although there are certainly sufficient examples of 2nd grade literature which is in the ‘mundane and boring’ category of reading! Fortunately, the ‘Granny’ series is not in this group!
Granny series - Content and Text Organisation (5 out of 5)
The ‘Granny’ series of books is written to appeal to an audience at around the 2nd grade reading level. Each book contains two short stories, all related to ‘Granny’ (who is certainly not your everyday type of granny!). The stories are divided into chapters which make for a perfect introduction to chapter books for 2nd grade students reading at this level. The text is well supported by illustrations which are black, grey and white and provide a great deal of humourous addition to the storyline. Each story is around 30 pages in length, which means they can be completed by most 2nd grade readers in one or two sittings. The sentence length and language used is perfect for 2nd grade readers, and the large font size and good use of white space means readers who might otherwise struggle to keep their place on a page will not get lost as they begin to fatigue with reading longer texts.
About the Granny series
The Granny series of books contains a number of great stories which can be used to link with various class topics and learning areas within the 2nd grade curriculum. The series includes ‘Granny Survivor ’ and ‘Granny Guru’. The books are written by Jan Dallimore and illustrated very competently by Heath McKenzie. They are available online through Black Dog Books.
This post is part of the series: Chapter Books for 2nd Grade Reading
Chapter books often make their way into the curriculum at around 2nd grade level. But how do you select books that are appealing and well written, and which still contain sufficient quality illustrations to keep kids at this level interested? This series looks at some of the books on the market.
