From: K.T. Horning <khorning>
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:42:02 -0500 (CDT)

Thanks for your insightful comments about what makes the Cynthia Rylant easy readers so distinctive. I have observed that a lot of people read the Henry
& Mudge series aloud to four and five year olds, a testament to the high writing quality. Steven Englefried is right -- they really do not "read" like easy readers, and yet they are!

Lynn Hoffman touches on another distinctive aspect of the Rylant easy readers -- the theme of friendship. This characteristic allows the author to develop character through contrasts, as Arnold Lobel did so well with his Frog and Toad series and as Betsy Byars is currently doing with her new series about Ant. Character development often seems to be lacking in easy readers due undoubtedly to the constraints of the form, so I give a lot of credit to those few authors who manage to do it.

Kathleen Horning (horning at inxpress.net) Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education UW-Madison
Received on Tue 07 Jul 1998 10:42:02 AM CDT