Ken and his sister, Jen, catch redfish on a happy family fishing trip to the lake. Pastel colors create a summer day mood for this friendly story. Similar beginning and ending word sounds teach word recognition, and slightly longer sentences enhance children’s reading skills.

Everyone knows cats and chickens don’t get along, so when the cat runs after Ben and Jen’s red hen, she hurries to hide in her chicken coop. Ben comes to the rescue and removes the cat from the chicken coop while Jen calms the hen. The lively story unfolds in this easy reader with easy-to-pronounce words to build word recognition. It offers the opportunity to demonstrate how responsible the two children were.

When a cat grabs the rag Pat uses to help her father clean the van and runs away with it, Pat gets very upset. Pat and Nat chase the cat across the vibrant pages and introduce new words that sound alike in this early reader. Context clues guide young readers to experience the story as they learn to correlate sounds with letters or groups of letters and begin to read.

The delightful characters of a cat, a rat, and Pat fill the pages of this cheerful beginning reader. The bold colors light up the story and encourage children to use the context clues to imagine what’s happening as they learn to pronounce simple words with similar sounds.