Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a teacher and mother to an almost 5 year old, I was very excited when I saw that there was a phonics set for the Pete the Cat series. My son loves those books! However, once I opened the book and started reading them, I was sorely disappointed. There is no possible way that these can be used for their intended purpose of teaching a child to read. They are aligned with their "phonics" listed on the books, however the word choice is very poor. Rather than simple CVC sight words to help a child learn to read, or even the simple words and phrases used in the regular Pete the Cat books, these book use much higher level sight words and vocabulary. For example, book 1 focuses on the short a sound. Most "learn to read books" use words such as cat, hat, fan, had, bag, and so on. Not this book. The short a words included are: at, cat, bad, fan, oranges, sandwiches, banana, happy, breakfast, last, and that. The short e book (book 2), uses the words bed, bedtime, best, end, everyone, except, fed, friend, gets, instead. So not only are they not appropriate for beginning readers, they are not accurate examples of the short vowel sounds. Short i, uses the word third as a short i example. Third does not make a short i sound. The i in this word is an r-controlled vowel and makes the sound /er/ like in bird and herd. These are just a few of the issues with these books. They do have cute stories and my children enjoy them as short bedtime stories, so if you child(ren) enjoy(s) the Pete the Cat series, then this is a good purchase. Just don't expect them to be very helpful with learning vowel sounds accurately or helping to learn to read.