FRANK AND THE SKUNK

Meg and Greg’s summer-camp exploits lend themselves to fun phonics stories for emerging readers.

Buddies Meg and Greg are spending two weeks at sleepaway camp. Each of the four segments in the book details a different camp misadventure and heavily features the phonogram du jour: nk, ng, tch, or dge. This is the second book in a series designed for children just learning to read or readers who are struggling due to dyslexia or other learning difficulties. The format of each chapter features stories related in prose on the left-hand side of the double-page spread and comics-style panels, with illustration labels, cartoons, and speech bubbles, on the right. Extension activities at the end of each segment offer further opportunities for practice. Meg, Greg, and the other campers get mixed up in pranks, humorous surprises, and even a disastrous canoe trip, which will work to hold older readers’ attention without feeling too predictable. The story in some sections suffers under the burden of including as many phonograms as possible: When Meg and Greg must devise a skit for a contest using words that end with “ng,” they perform “The King’s Long Fangs.” Dyslexia-friendly features are integrated into the book, and strategies for using the text features are clearly explained. Meg and Greg present white; there is some diversity among secondary characters indicated in the illustrations.

A thoughtfully designed storybook adds another helpful tool to the box for readers who need support.