Making Waves With Reading (Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 2: Patterned Stories: A Sinking Feeling - Roderick Hunt)

Member Name: DavyMichelle

Product:	Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 2: Patterned Stories: A Sinking Feeling - Roderick Hunt
Date:	25/08/09 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, Simple, Confidence Building, Affordable

Disadvantages: None Worth Mentioning

A Sinking Feeling is a stage 2 Patterned Story from the Oxford Reading Tree range. The books are designed to help young children learn to read, with stage 2 being aimed at children between four and six years of age. This particular title is available from Amazon for £2.99 which isn't unreasonable I don't think. It's a very well thought out book that is worth the price tag if you think your particular child would like the story.

The story is very simply about a group of children in a swimming pool. They are climbing onto a giant floating duck inflatable, helping one another up. On each page, we see another child climbing up, until eventually one child can't get up. Well not at first anyway, but the child tries again and when they do get up - the whole duck inflatable falls sideways and we're left with a picture showing an upside down duck inflatable along with a row of children's feet emerging from the water.

The story has a nice simple, repetitive nature to it that uses lots of the trickier new words like 'climbed' several times. This helps young children to learn them quickly of course. The visual joke is easy for even a four year old to understand and find amusing, and this of course is helpful in making learning to read fun for them. This book is obviously designed for being more of a confidence-builder than anything else.

This book features the popular characters Biff and Kipper, along with a few of their friends. Readers of the series in general will recognise these characters, and enjoy sharing a new adventure with them I think. The grandson certainly enjoys this book and I find this one gets chosen quite often. The grandson is extremely confident in reading this book without any assistance, thanks to the heavily repetitive nature of the text. He also enjoys the little joke at the end when we see that the inflatable duck has fallen over and send all the children flying head-first off it backwards into the swimming pool.

There are lots of titles out there to choose from in this range, and this one doesn't stand out as being exceptionally good in comparison. But it's definitely one of the nicer books in the series, and one which I think most young children would enjoy, benefit from and understand easily. It fits nicely in with the aims of the patterned stories collection in that it's definitely a fun confidence builder.

Summary: Highly Recommended