If you haven’t already heard of it, Epic! Books is a digital library of 40,000+ books that are free for parents and educators. Epic! has so many awesome features. You can narrow down your search for books on their site by topic, lexile, read-aloud, and much more. Through my searches, I have found plenty of book series for targeting specific goals. I wanted to share some of my favorites.
Articulation Goals
Jane Belk Moncure has written 23 books that each tell a story using words starting with a given letter of the alphabet-- from ‘My “A” sound Box’ to ‘My “xyz” Sound Box’. If your target sound coincides with a letter sound, these books can be a fun way to elicit target words!
Phonemic Awareness
"Let’s Read Together” books by Barbara deRubertis contain rhyming words and a lot of repetition. You can read them yourself or use the “Read to Me” feature for the books in this series. Try letting your students fill in the last word on each page to see if they can guess the rhyme!
Pam Holden books are color coded by their four reading levels. These books contain spelling patterns and sight words that are repeated throughout. The end of each book contains a page with a list of those words to practice.
Early Language/ Basic Concepts
Jennifer Sattler books can be used to target various early language skills! Plus, they have fun illustrations that the kids love.
- Jungle Gym (basic concepts: in/out, up/down,etc.)
- One Red Sock (colors, numbers)
- Oink-Oink Moo! Cock-a-doodle-doo! (Farm animals and their sounds)
- Bundle Up (clothing)
- Dirty Birdies (numbers)
Rhea Wallace books can be used to practice using carrier phrases. Her collection includes books about the senses: “I See”, “I Smell”, “I Taste”, “I Touch”, and “I Hear”, as well as “I Love” and “I Can”.
(She has other books on Epic! too, some of which pair fun illustrations with classic nursery rhymes.)
Other Epic! Hints:
- You can search “Collections” on Epic! to Browse collections created by other educators for specific topics and skills.
- When you search for books, you can filter by age range, grade, or lexile
- You can assign specific books to your students, and they will be able to access them for free during the week between 7am and 4pm using your class code.
- Parents can join Epic for free and access up to two hours of reading per week Monday-Friday after 4pm
Author: Jackie Follety, M.S. CCC-SLP