First chapter books are great for those children in between chapter books and picture books. The books jump quickly into plot and explain vocabulary along the way to really boost young children's reading skills and helps get them ready for chapter books. These books also still have pictures, but frequently they are black and white and not on every page to help ease the transition.
Mary Pope Osborne has published 45 Magic Tree House Books and doesn't plan to stop there which is a blessing for so many kids because they just love her first chapter books. The Knight at Dawn is the second book in this series and follows Jack and Annie as they travel through books to the time of knights and castles. Jack and Annie have recently discovered a tree house not far from their home and inside this wondrous place they found books that can transport them to the time and place of the pictures in the book. Jack and Annie head to a castle in this installment and find themselves in trouble when some guards assume they are thieves or spies. I won't spoil it for you, but pick up this book to see how Jack and Annie get out of their precarious situation.
It's no surprise that Dan Gutman is a popular author in first chapter books around Baltimore County because in 2002 he won the Black-Eyed Susan Award for his book Jackie and Me. He also won in 2003-2004 for his book The Million Dollar Kick. Dan Gutman like to make people laugh and it shows in his book Mr. Sunny is Funny which is about the Summer exploits of Arlo or A.J. No one could be happier about the Summer season than A.J. mainly because he gets to be out of school and away from his classmate Andrea. You can imagine his reaction when A.J.'s mother tells them that Andrea and her family will be staying at their summer beach house. Arlo's mood improves when after a while his friends come to join him as well and the book follows their exploits through the beginning of summer.
Who hasn't heard of Barbara Park and her Junie B. Jones series. Junie B. Jones has even made it's way to New York times bestselling list and Park herself has won over 40 children's book awards. The 18th installment of the Junie B. Jones series is Junie B., First Grader (at last!). In this book Junie B. starts her first day of first grade and discovers that things are going to be different than last year. Her friends from the previous year seem to have made new friends and she has a different teacher. It's not long before Junie B. decides that she does not like first grade especially when her new teacher discovers that Junie B. needs glasses. As it first grade wasn't hard enough! You'll have to pick the book up and read to see if her year gets better. No spoilers here.
Ron Roy published his first book in 1978 and has been writing ever since. He has written popular series such as the A to Z mysteries and the Calendar Mysteries. June Jam is a Calendar Mystery about twin brothers Brian and Bradley as well as their older brother Josh who have to do chores to earn some evening ice cream. The boys invite their friends over to help with the chores and partake of the highly anticipated ice cream. While doing chores Bradley comes up with the idea to make strawberry jam for their dad on fathers day which is the following day. Everyone agrees that this is a great idea until they discover that something has been eating their strawberries. The boys and their friends quickly decide that they will have to catch this berry eating monster to salvage the garden, but their efforts are thwarted time and again. Will the children be able to catch this destroyer of gardens and what will they do for fathers day?
Jim Benton is not only an author of children's books, but an illustrator as well. He is diverse in his endeavors and his Dear Dumb Diary series along has sold millions of books to young readers and earned him a place on the coveted New York Times bestseller list. Dear Dumb Diary, My Pants Are Haunted! is the second title in the series. This book and the rest of this series are written in diary format with pictures to accompany the text. The series follows Jamie Kelly as she rants and raves to her dumb diary. In this particular book her schools popularity ladder has gone out of whack possibly because of some haunted pants and they turn out to be her only pair of pants left because her beagle has eaten holes in her other pairs, or so she believes. Jamie has to manage school, mistreat her dog, figure out her friend and deal with her mom and no one is a better listener than her dumb diary. This is a cute book for beginning readers and if you're looking for other diary style books you may want to check out the Dork Diaries series by Rachel Russell or the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney.
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