Budding Reader Series by Melinda Thompson, Melissa Ferrell & Doug Oglesby (illustrator)

This series was created to help struggling readers. There are five sets of books. Each set focuses on words with a specific short vowel sound. There are 10 books in each set. Each book has the same story in the illustrations, but the the first book in each set is wordless, and each successive book adds more words to the text. The final book in the first set, Cat and Rat, has 11 words. By the time readers finish the fifth set, Hens, there are 22 words.
You can see how the text becomes increasingly complex from the following screen shots.

 

One of my casual hobbies is collecting old readers. In the past I have helped struggling learners become successful readers by loaning them to them. (Unfortunately, I have also lost more than a few this way.) There is something about repetitive vocabulary with incremental additions of new words that builds confidence in readers. Are they good literature? Not at all, but they get the job done. I'll never forget a reading interview with a grade one boy who paused in his reading of John and Janet, to say, "Cheriee, these people talk funny." 

This series reminds me of these. Of course these illustrations are much brighter and more colourful. Still, the concept remains the same. I'm going to let our special needs teachers have a look to see what they think. Although I remember reading the same book umpteen times to my boys when they were young, I'm not sure how students will react to the same story retold so many time.

I tried two of these out with Max, my three year old (brilliant) great-nephew. He liked being able to tell his own story, but wasn't enthusiastic about then reverting to simple one word narration.