The images look like comics but the humor is distinctly across ages. It’s picture book sized with an easy book text (or is it an early chapter book?). I don’t mean to imply that the book hasn’t already been “leveled” by its publisher (Lexile Scale: 370), but it’s one of those funny little titles that eschews the rigorous rote categorization educators try to place on it. This is why I’m so grateful for books like Sergio Ruzzier’s new Fox and Chick series, starting with The Party and Other Stories. No reading outside the box or exploring grown-up books on the sly or engaging with reading as anything but strictly leveled homework. The idea is that you’d slot kids into a distinct level and then have them carefully read “up” from there. Now many schools have fully embraced the idea of “leveling” the books, which is to say each title is ascribed a distinct letter or number that indicates its text complexity, word count, etc. Since that time we’ve moved away from heavy-handed didacticism couched as literacy aids, but here in the 21st century the tactics have shifted to a new angle. “In Adam’s Fall we sinned all,” reads one particularly strident abecedarian title. Have you ever sat down and looked at books meant to instruct children in the art of reading from the early 18th to 19th centuries? When Americans colonists first came around to the idea of teaching children to read via books, the titles weren’t exactly what we’ve come to associate as kid friendly.
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