Imran Visits his Auntie

Review also includes:

Making a Book, 0953403696

At School, 0953403688

Hide and Seek, 978-1903588055

Eid, 1903588022

Imran and Alia at the Wedding, 1903588014

Wali Khan, 978-0953403653

Irene Fernandez, 978-0953403646

Alia goes to Pakistan, 1903588030

In the City, 978-0953403615

Idrees visits his cousin Ali, 978-1903588000

Ramadan, 978-1903588048

I went to the Market, 978-0953403622

Weddings, 0953403661

On the Road, 978-0953403639

This series of 15 books provides a reading scheme which offers the opportunity for use in different ways within multicultural classrooms. It provides background knowledge and insight into cultural diversity at a very simple and basic level.

These books are also of particular interest to children with a cultural connection to Pakistan whether they are new immigrants or first generation children born in the UK. This set of books can therefore be used to motivate such children to read something they can relate to. This should help them contribute in a meaningful way to classroom discussions thereby helping to stress the relevance of learning to home life in general. They are suitable for early readers from the foundation stage to key stage 1 for guided reading.

The books are graded 1-6 in order of difficulty based on the criteria in ‘Bookbands for Guided Reading’ as recommended by the National Literacy Strategy, which thereby takes into consideration the overall demands of the text. The books have a ‘controlled vocabulary’ which ranges from 31-158 words. Sufficient repetition of these words is present which is appropriately tailored to each age group.

There is also a separate teacher’s guide to the text which offers additional background information, suggestions and ideas for each of the 15 books including notes for teachers who would want to use them for foundation and key stage 1 reading. The key vocabulary section is translated into several other languages which help make children aware of other languages and of cultural diversity.

Three books are illustrated with watercolour pictures and the remaining ones have well researched and relevant photographs. The text is simple, clear and in a handwritten font. These attributes help make the books very appealing to children.  (Sold in sets inc. Teacher’s Guide, £50.00 pbk; available from Maralyn Dewar, Education Bradford, Future House, Bolling Road, Bradford BD4 7EB.)