Early Readers - Nice Wheels

Recently, I have been trying to locate, mainly for curiosity sake, some decent Early Readers. This past week I checked out a number of them from our local library and hope to provide a few reviews over the next couple of weeks. Generally, it is hard to find an Early Reader that isn’t boring or lacking in something to keep a reader’s interest. Granted when writing these the author is trying to stick to a controlled vocabulary list and you never know what the editor is thinking when selecting the illustrator. Hopefully, this lack of decent Early Readers isn’t putting off kids that need help in moving forward in their independent reading.

Nice Wheels – Gwendolyn Hooks 2005

This book is part of the My First Reader series from Scholastic. Overall, it is pretty good and even tackles what could be a touchy subject. We find that a new boy is joining an existing class, but he is also in a wheelchair. The main character (a nameless boy) narrates the story through his thoughts about the “new kid” and wonders if he can do what the rest of the class can do. As the class goes through its daily activities, the class and narrator sees that the “new kid” can do all the same things they can such as paint in art class, sing in music, share during lunch, etc.

The illustrator does a nice job in presenting the message and story without over doing the wheelchair factor. The expressions of the class and the “new kid” are upbeat and believable. This book makes for a nice story to learn about school activities and others that may appear to be different along with a number of new easy to recognize words.