My first selection was extracted from a “Treasury of Literature” series basal from HBJ. This basal was distributed to Texas schools in 1993 and at that time, balanced literacy was a common term among publishers of reading programs. This text is leveled at 1-5 within the series, with comparison levels of 1-1 being the beginning anthology for first grade and level and 1-6 being the last in the series for first grade. Within the instructions of the basal, it was stated that each unit, and there are two units within the book, takes anywhere from 4-6 weeks to complete. I would guess that this particular text is geared toward the January through March time frame. The fact that this series is placed on a time table rather than a skill level progression, indicates that this method of leveling texts it incongruent with the development of skills in reading. Another statement that is made within the teacher manual is that the students are past the shared reading level and that they are doing strictly guided and independent reading. That statement alone indicates that we are placing children’s skills on a time continuum and that they must reach proficiency

Say,A. (1993) Grandfather’s Journey. Houghton-Mifflin: New York.

Slobodkina, E. (1940). Caps for Sale. Addison Wesley: New York.

Grandfather’s Journey is a masterpiece of illustrations and pensive reflection on a life in two worlds. The story is about a man and his grandfather who have lived in and embraced two cultures. This book is an autobiography of Say and his family. It describes his feelings about America, his newfound land, and Japan the land of his birth. At the end of the story, Say identifies with his grandfather because he like his grandfather is torn between two countries.

This story had 10 pages total, and the setting was in Frog and Toad’s houses. Frog and Toad were the only two characters in the story. The lines of print on the page were at the greatest 12 and at the least 3, but with 6 of the pages having 9-12 lines of print. These characteristics would rate this story one level higher than Level H, the level that Fountas and Pinnell rated this book in their leveling book list. Because the story is printed in a basal, perhaps the publishers placed more lines of print on one page to save space and printing costs. For a Level J book, it is indicated in the leveling guide that the book length would be between 30-60 pages, so Level I is in the middle of those two levels which seems to suit this story the best. A characteristic of Level I books is that the text is longer with more sentences per page and a larger number of words. Level I also indicates that there is less illustration support, and this holds true as one of the challenges of this story, because some of the pages were deplete of illustrations. The number of words of this story is 395. This basal series has one more two unit book to complete the series. I would suspect that the publishers would introduce that book at the beginning of April. However, we are not looking at time frames, we are looking at skill development. In comparing this story to “Danny and the Dinosaur”, which is a level J book, I think that I have rated this book appropriately. Danny has many more adventures than Frog and Toad, and is more challenging because of the complexity of the situations that are presented to Danny. In “Danny and the Dinosaur” there is the use of three syllable words which is not a characteristic of “Cookies”. It is for those reasons that I believe that this book is most appropriately rated at Level I.

Some topics in this essay:
January March, Fountas Pinnell, Wesley York, Dinosaur” Level, Grandfather’s Journey, Doctors Education, Brace Jovanovich, Frog Toad, Finally Frog, Leveling Guide, level book, lines print, reading level, book level, frog toad, level level, fountas pinnell, “danny dinosaur”, characteristic level, eat cookies, prefer eat cookies, lines print page, “danny dinosaur” level, texts reading anticipate,