I spent a lot of time with my niece and nephew this weekend reading stacks and stacks of pictures books. My three year old niece is very good at picking out N’s and O’s to make up the word, no. We were reading one book and I saw a ’no’ coming up on the page and I noticed she didn’t recognize it. I pointed out the letters and she looked at me puzzled and the matter of factly said, “That’s not an N and that’s not an O.” This made me smile because she was actually dead on. See, not all typography is created equally: choosing books with the correct type can make or break a child’s learn-to-read experience.
The letters that Vivi told me were not N’s and O’s were in italics. Italic letters, for a very practiced reader, are recognizable symbols. However for someone learning a new language, the difference between standard type and italics is like apples and oranges… and believe me when I say the subtleties of choosing the right type for learning to read gets a lot more complicated than that!
This experience with Vivi snapped me back to my roots of why I started to create children’s books in the first place: to help kiddos learn to read. I am going to start to talk more about what you should look for in reading materials to help your little ones learn to read— and what to look out for that can create a frustrating learning experience!
More on this topic to come! In the meantime, check out my books on RadishLane.com. All books include very specific design that helps to remove barriers to literacy learning and create a calm and learnable reading experience.