"The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children."
—Commission on Reading, organized by the National Academy of Education and the National Institute of Education and funded under the U.S. Department of Education
What are Magic Reader Classics?
Magic Reader Classics are children's books on video. No print accompaniment necessary, because every word is displayed. Gus, Angel, and Pinky follow the magic wand as Biblio reads from the magic scroll. Each title contains more than twenty original illustrations that kids will enjoy again and again. The mice read all the captions aloud, and kids can, too!
Matching written words to their sounds and meanings is how we learn to read, and early literacy is a great predictor of success in all subjects. We hope Magic Reader Classics will help many young learners, both those who have great access to education and adult attention and those who do not, to become fluent readers at an early age.
Age Range
There is a great deal of pressure in children's media merchandising to specify the age range for a product. This pressure is driven by economics, not the needs of young learners. As anyone who has kids or works with them knows, different kids learn different skills at different ages.
On the one hand, it is never too soon to begin familiarizing children with text. This familiarity is fundamental to written language acquisition. On the other hand, we are never too old to enjoy having someone read us a story. Magic Reader Classics are for anyone who might enjoy and benefit from them, from pre-textual toddlers, to active emerging readers, to English-language learners, to busy moms and dads.
Contextual Learning
We learn things more easily when they have context. For language, that context is narrative: stories, or sequences of words and events that make sense. Here is a simple sentence that tells a story: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Here is the same set of words arranged in a way that makes no sense: "Fox lazy dog brown over quick the jumped the."
Imagine using the latter series of words to explain to someone what the words mean, or how to use them in speech or writing. It would be hard, because they don't bear any relation to one another! Learning phonics, the sounds of letters and letter combinations, is one important part of learning to read. The other important part is contextual learning, and that is what Magic Reader Classics are about.