Nightgown Countdown

Description

Nightgown Countdown

Written by Frank B. Edwards
Illustrated by John Bianchi

After the farmer climbs into bed for the night, her animals leave their stalls for an late night frolic but predictably they drop out of the fun one by one until only the rooster is left. Features rhyming text and a classic counting backwards pattern.

“Six farm animals hopping around the hive.

“Goat bumped a bee, then there were five.”

The story takes the reader on a playful romp through numbers from 1 to 10 — ending with a rooster all by himself as the sun rises to start a new day.

From the farmer in her nightgown to the menagerie of cartoon beasts, John Bianchi offers up his usual cartoon fun to accompany the rhymes and rhythm of his story for beginning readers.

The books in this New Reader series are designed to encourage children to take their first tentative steps toward reading.

The series has proven to be very popular with teachers and parents as well as young children who enjoy the experience of learning to read. The books use classic literacy strategies to encourage new readers to learn language skills:

• Repetition
• Rhyme
• Predictability
• Simple illustration to provide context and clues
• Simple language
• Number patterns

Children quickly learn the word and number patterns so they can predict the number of characters who will appear on the following page and the words that develop the simple plots. Bright, colourful illustrations have proven popular with literacy instructors and parent who use a “story-talk” approach to engage children with the books.

Follow this link to watch this video of the author helping a three-year-old learn to read one of his New Reader books.

24 pages. Fully illustrated.
Softcover.
Reading level: Grade one (G)
Interest level by age: preschool to K