Ages 2 to 5: pre-K to kindergarten reading
A short picture book to share aloud.
What a book at this level is
Every draft is measured against these numbers before anybody sees it. A book that falls outside them is rewritten, and if it still can’t be brought inside them, we don’t send it.
- Length
- 100 to 500 words, aiming at 250
- Pages
- 10 to 16, with 6 to 40 words on each
- Longest sentence
- 10 words
- Reading grade
- Flesch-Kincaid -1 to 1.5
- TaleTykes level
- 0 to 300, on a scale of our own
- Typically read in
- Pre-K to kindergarten
- Pictures
- 8 to 10
- Chapters
- None. It is one story, read in a sitting.
- How much is people talking
- Between 0 and 35 percent
- Built from sounds they know
- No, because nobody at this age is sounding a book out alone
- Danger in the story
- None. Nobody is ever alone and afraid.
What the story is like
How it is put together
Meet someone, and a small thing goes wrong. They try twice, differently each time, and then it works because of something they noticed. A warm ending, with the refrain one last time. No villain.
What is worth worrying about
Concrete and immediate: a lost toy, a shoe that will not go on, not wanting to go to bed.
What is funny at this age
Things going wrong in front of you. A joke that comes back. We never use sarcasm. A child who can’t hear it yet takes it literally, and in a story that usually comes across as unkind.
The shapes a story takes
repetition, cumulative, refrain
Verse is encouraged.
The levels either side
Children move between these levels at very different speeds, and how fast they go doesn’t matter much. We move a reader on when the books they actually read show they are ready, whatever their birthday says.