Jumpstart: How To Become Your Child's Best Reading Teacher

More detailed than ALA's Read Aloud Now! (reviewed in our October 1991 issue) and considerably less expensive than Curriculum Associates' Reading to Your Children (reviewed in our June 1992 issue), Jumpstart offers a good introduction to reading with children. Created by Candace Hogan and Teresa DuBois, the program exhorts parents to incorporate reading into their daily activities (shopping or picking up the mail), thereby creating a "reading rich environment." Reading together with picture books, the parent can emphasize those characteristics--rhyme, rhythm, and repetition--which initially entice us as children into the world of books. During the "training wheels" period, children are encouraged to use their fingers, eyes, and brains to follow along and help with the reading; and, in the section on "decoding strategies," parents are offered helpful tips for aiding their children in figuring out difficult words. The program concludes with some writing activities and answers to the 10 most common questions from parents about teaching their children to read. And, the opening song, with the lovely refrain "there's nowhere I cannot go now in this world" (though overplayed during the video), is really neat (and sounds like a cross between Suzanne Vega and the Violent Femmes). Although there's a bit of hyperbole in describing the program in "revolutionary new idea" terms--there's nothing here that will surprise librarians or avid readers (with the possible exception of Oscar Wilde being characterized as the "great Irish poet")--Jumpstart will provide parents and children a headstart on reading, and is the best of the bunch we've reviewed to date. Recommended. (Available from: Let's Be Frank Productions, 1850 Union Drive, Lakewood, CO 80215; (303) 232-5703.)