The Reading Scheme Is Dead… Long Live the Reading Scheme?

The attempt to combine Pedagogy with Literature in the teaching of reading has exercised a number of publishers of late. Amongst the latest initiatives is Cambridge Reading.

Annemarie Young, its Senior Editor, outlines her approach.

Four years ago, when we started developing Cambridge Reading, the real books versus reading schemes debate was raging. There were very valid arguments on both sides. On the one hand, there was the importance of high-quality books while on the other there was the need for structure for children and support material for teachers.

The general editors – Kate Ruttle, Richard Brown, Jean Glasberg and I – soon decided that the dichotomy was unnecessary. We became convinced that with careful planning, and the right authors and illustrators, it would be possible to satisfy both sides of the equation – good books and a framework with support material to help teachers teach reading. So we set out to produce a reading scheme made up of really good books. When I explained our intentions to the potential contributors I approached, I was delighted at their positive and enthusiastic response.

But I must confess I couldn’t bring myself to refer to Cambridge Reading as a reading scheme for a long time – not until the first books came in and we saw that we had achieved the ‘really good books’ part of the equation as well as the teaching framework. Lisa Kopper has called it ‘a new kind of reading scheme’, and I’m happy with that.

We knew our task would not be easy. There aren’t many authors who can write good stories for beginner and early readers. This requires a particular sensitivity to language as well as the ability to distil a story to its essentials and provide a humorous twist. We wanted people who were willing to be part of a creative team in which there is an absolute commitment to quality and everyone’s expertise is respected. Good relations between authors, editors and illustrators are, after all, crucial to the process of producing really good books of any sort.

Our first task was to set up the framework. Most children need manageable texts, progression and an underlying continuity when they are learning. The first three phases, Beginning to Read, Becoming a Reader and Towards Independence, cover children’s reading development between the ages of about 4-plus to 7 or 8. (The first two phases were published in February and the third will be published in the autumn.)

We wanted to ensure variety of both text-types and illustration styles. To achieve this we commissioned, from the second phase, a range of authors and illustrators to write books within different genres: contemporary fiction, fantasy, traditional tales, poetry and rhyme, information books, and an original series of autobiographical stories of childhood.

We gave the authors guidelines on length and the age of the readers but we did not give them word lists. We wanted good stories – with amusing texts, enhanced by imaginative and supportive illustrations – which children would want to read again and again. We did not want boringly repetitive texts written in unnatural language because these features actually make reading and understanding more difficult for beginner and early readers, and poor quality writing and illustrations are thoroughly demotivating for children.

As you can see from the quotes which accompany this piece, authors found the parameters a creative challenge, and they also appreciated the opportunity to brainstorm ideas.

As if in response to Chris Powling’s general question in the May editorial of BfK, we knew that to get the best books we had to pay careful attention to the overall design of each book not just to the text itself. In the same issue of BfK, Korky Paul underlined how essential this integration is to the success of a story. He also talked about pictures enhancing the text. Good illustrators can do this even for beginner and early readers without confusing them. We have some wonderful examples of this in Sami Sweeten’s illustrations for Juliet Partridge’s books, especially The Picnic and Blowing Bubbles. And David Parkins’ hilarious illustrations for Two by Two have children poring over them and going back again and again to find new surprises.

It’s true that children are always the first to see mistakes of continuity, as we discovered in our trialling, but they also love visual cross-references and delight in spotting these in John Prater’s set of fantasy stories. Children’s comments from the trialling have often been the most perceptive, and certainly the most entertaining!

Children also love the recurring characters in Tony Bradman’s Class One stories. Priscilla Lamont’s pictures made the characters come alive for all of us. I’ll never forget one editorial discussion we had when someone protested, ‘But Paul wouldn’t do that!’

With the information books we were determined to provide children with what Meredith Hooper calls ‘insider information’. The facts had to be accurate but also had to be accessible. The author’s task was greatly helped by Bert Kitchen’s stunning and meticulous artwork and Peter Kent’s imaginative detail.

Some texts were worked on until all of us (especially the authors) were happy with them, but some were right almost at once, like Gerald Rose’s sad but compelling autobiographical story, Tiger Dreams.

At the other end of the spectrum, we are now working on novels for 8- to 11-year-olds, and that’s just as interesting and rewarding, for us and the authors, as Judith O’Neill confirms.

The development of Cambridge Reading has been immensely exciting for all concerned and we’re proud of the results, especially when we see or hear of the reactions of children to the published books, like this one from a class of children in a large Essex primary school, ‘Hey Miss, these are brill! Can we have them?’ If children love the books, that’s the best test.

Comments from some of the Cambridge Reading authors and illustrators

Tony Bradman

‘I tackled the stories as I would any stories – I thought long and hard about the characters involved, their backgrounds, their wants, needs and problems. I had quite a lot of discussions with Annemarie and her team – all very useful. I didn’t set out with any preconceptions about repetition or restricted vocabulary – I was given some guidelines but didn’t find this a limitation. In fact throughout my writing career I’ve always tried to use any parameters as a creative challenge.

‘The actual editorial process was very positive – in fact, it was the kind of editing that isn’t as common in trade publishing as it should be, with plenty of attention to details and an enormous commitment to getting the books right for the children who will read them.

‘I’d worked with Priscilla Lamont before, so was confident that she’d do a good job, but I award top marks to the CUP team for their commitment to the design of the books – they showed the same level of application to detail as with the texts. I’m delighted with the way the books have turned out.’

Priscilla Lamont

‘I found the sheer volume of work a little daunting to start with. However, before long I was immersed in the world of Class One and the various storylines. We wanted the children reading them to really get to know the characters and have a genuine interest in the stories – in the way that any reader needs to want to turn the page and go on reading. Simple and obvious really. Certain guidelines had to be followed, but these really weren’t inhibiting, or indeed inappropriate.’

Bill Gillham

‘Being set the discipline of a length for the text (but no restriction on vocabulary) is excellent for writers and results in a creative response that surprises themselves.’

Lisa Kopper

‘Annemarie Young sent me a story by Grace Hallworth called Sleep Tight. I liked it very much. The text was full of visual imagery and had a lovely poetic quality. I was surprised and delighted to find it was part of a new kind of reading scheme. As an illustrator, an evocative text can make all the difference in the world to the expressiveness of my own work. This particular project was well conceived, aggro free and brought me a great deal of pleasure.’

Susan Hellard

‘It was very helpful to come to a meeting with the publishing team and talk through the series. It’s amazing how rare, in my experience, this is. Hearing June [Crebbin] talk about the characters made them “gel” in my head a lot better. I’ve never experienced trialling before. It was interesting to hear that the caretaker character was liked and that children tried to pat the puppy.’

June Crebbin

‘There were guidelines, concerning length, number of characters,
increasing complexity of the plot, but not the nature of the
characters, the subject matter or the style of writing. These were left
to me. The stories were mine.

‘At every stage I was kept informed and consulted. Suggestions for improvements were made, but they were suggestions, not directives. Nothing was too much trouble. Stories, words, phrases, layouts were checked and re-checked. I appreciated and admired the attention to detail.

‘Throughout the project, I felt a valued member of the team. There was always a positive atmosphere – a desire to get it right – to achieve books that children would want to read again and again.’

Judith O’Neill

‘I very much enjoyed my visit to meet the editorial team for Cambridge Reading. I’d written them a story for 11-year-olds. Their enthusiasm and their thoughtful, probing questions made me want to look at it all over again and do some drastic rewriting. The whole experience has been exhilarating for me as a writer. My story is certainly very much better now as a result of that morning’s discussion.’

All of the published titles in Cambridge Reading should be generally available through specialist children’s bookshops around the country, or direct from Cambridge University Press. For further information, contact Louise Whitson on 01223 325915.

Annemarie Young, the senior comissioning editor for Cambridge Reading, was a teacher and teacher educator before joining Cambridge University Press in 1985. In 1992 she took on the development of this new reading resource for primary school children.

BfK will be returning to the subject of re-vamped reading schemes in comparison with ‘real’ books for beginning readers in a future issue. In the meantime, letters on this topic from our readers will be very welcome.