Discover Dear Dragon Series
with Norwood House Press

Join me to discover Dear Dragon series with Norwood House Press, which is a children book publisher for Pre-K to 8. They cover different level books and sections.

Today I am inviting you discovering the Dear Dragon series with Norwood House Press. This is a quick completed review about A Beginning-to-Read Books Dear Dragon series. This series is for new readers who already know how to sound alphabet letters and basic reading concepts like reading from the left to the right. If your child doesn’t know how to sound out yet, you still can use these books for reading aloud and teach him/her basic words.

My daughter learnt how to read at the age of four. I shared this experience here on my blog, “Can I Teach My Four-Year-Old to Read?” She loved to go to the library to borrow books since then. After months visiting library with her, one day she picked a couple books up and showed them to me to make sure that it was at her level because they didn’t have written levels on the covers. I always looked before saying yes or no because every company was different. I loved what I saw, especially the word list and activities in the back of the books.

My goal was helping my daughter become an independent reader. I encouraged her to look for books at her levels. I looked for books that used phonic, common words.

However, these books are exceeding my expectations with all the activities, guidelines, word list and reading comprehension questions. Basically, I think you can use these books to teach how to read.

This series covers the most important reading components.

According to National Reading Panel from NIH, there are 5 reading components combined together creating an effective technique for teaching children to read – phonemic awareness, phonics/decoding, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary.

Phonemic awareness: it relates to sounds. Kids are able to identify words that rhyme, count the numbers of syllables in a word and notice sound repetition

Phonics: is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps them identify the different sounds or letters either when they are alone or combined with other letters to form words.

Fluency: it is all about teaching kids the reading ability with appropriate speed, accuracy, and proper expression. It is the ability to recognize words easily.

Vocabulary: it is all about understanding the meaning of the new words. It can be trained through reading or listening to others.

Comprehension: This technique helps kids to understand what they read.

The first series is called Dear Dragon Developing Readers series. It is an introduction to PK-K readers.

They claim that “The books provide emergent readers opportunities to read for meaning and gain fluency through familiar topics, simple story lines, strong picture supports and repetitive high frequency words.”

I can’t disagree with them. The first page is the “Words in This Book” for practicing and getting familiar with the words in the book. Here are some examples for you to see.

This is the continuation of the Dear Dragon series. The boy and dragon play and learn together in this series.

In these levels, you can find extra resources in the back of the books including reading reinforcement activities, word lists. “Activities focus on foundation, language, and reading skills.”

There are more words. The sentences are longer and more complicated, but still simple and repetitive enough for children to read on their own. 

The next level up is Astro the Alien Visits Ocean Animals by Emily Sohn. We haven’t touched on these new series yet.

My daughter’s reading skill is improving a lot after months of practicing reading every day for at least 15 minutes.

I am continuing working with her on decoding and reading higher level books. We are in the second week testing out new phonics and decoding books.

And this series is on my list. I will update this post when my daughter is ready to get her hands on these.