Pirate Pat (First Reading) (1.0 Very First Reading)

This review is about the series of books. I have ordered a few first reading books, but these are by far the best - they avoid a lot of the basic mistakes that many others make. For a start, the vocabulary is carefully chosen to be easy and to mostly obey the basic spelling rules. For example, there are lots of words like "man", "sit" and "did" in the early books; more of the irregular words are introduced later. An obvious plus, but one that some books miss - the the font is nice and big. Next, although there are pictures, they don't give the game away in terms of what the words are (lots of books put a picture of a dog and then "dog" underneath - useless - my child just says "dog" without looking at the writing). To keep the stories interesting, there is some supporting text for an adult to read alongside the child to fill the story out a bit. Finally there are several books in each series with steadily increasing difficulty, and also two series, which is useful as my child tends to memorize the stories after a few repetitions, so I need something new. Excellent well thought-out books and well worth investing in.

Super first reader for those children who love pirates! Alternate pages for the adult and child to read.

I bought these when my little girl first expressed an interest in reading and they are lovely - really engaging and great stories with a little for your child to read (often repeated words from the story which the adult reads). A really good place to start when starting to read and blend sounds.

This book has two parts to every page: 4 or 5 lines for the adult to read and then 3 or 4 simpler words in a larger size for your budding reader to tackle. The story is fun and well written so that the rhymes help your little one to anticipate the sounds of the words they are to read. Child words are simple (e.g. Sit Sam! Sit!) and make for an enjoyable shared reading experience.

A review from my three year old daughter. "I think this book is great. My friends should buy it from the bookshop. It's good because I like pirates. My favourite bit is when the pirate is tapping on the window and says Tap, Tap, Tap. I'm three and three-quarters and I found it easy to read. I've read it lots of times. It's my favourite reading book. You should buy this if you can't read but want to learn."

This was the first book I taught my son to read - before he had begun learning at school. He enjoyed it - it's 1 page parent / 1 page child reading format. Nice pictures and simple 3-4 letter words.

Pirate Pat was the breakthrough book for my 5yr old grandson to start to enjoy learning to read. Up until then he had been very reluctant with all "reading" books. We have since ordered the whole series and many of the books appeal to his sense of humour and he has been very keen to work out what the words are saying. The illustrations are particularly good - capturing his interest.

Good book to help children to read

Great way to interest kids in reading! We tried the Mat books and a few other beginning reader books. Maybe my daughter (age 4) is just too young, or maybe just not that interested, but I had a really hard time keeping her attention on sounding out the words in any of the other books we tried. However, the Usborne approach works great! If you read the description, you know that the grown up reads the left hand page, and then there are 1-3 simple 3-letter words on the right hand page for the kids to sound out. This approach works for my daughter, because she is engaged in the story and so is motivated to sound out the words.

A mi hijo de 4 años le gusta mucho y le está ayudando con sus primeras lecturas en inglés. Tengo pendiente comprar las siguientes para ir añadiendo letras a su aprendizaje.

V good book for kidz

Molto bello!! Alle mie bimbe piace molto e a mia figlia che iniziato a leggere diverte molto perché ci sono frasi semplici che riesce a leggere. Lo consiglio assolutamente!!

El nivel es adecuado para introducirse en la lectura. Única objeción sería que es muy corto y se acsba demasiado rápido.