All about bears

Through its slim trim and glossy page design, the National Geographic Readers series (6 new titles) works to engage readers of varying levels. All About Bears, a pre-reader volume, targets beginning readers. Large, appealing photos of various kinds of bears take up the bulk of each page, while the gently repetitive text helps guide new and less confident readers ("All bears have fur. Some bears have black fur. Some bears have brown fur.") The images, which are clearly labelled, help introduce vocabulary words, many of which were introduced through a vocabulary tree on the opening pages. An ending picture glossary rounds out this resource for early nonfiction readers. Reliable in format and solid in execution, this series works well to introduce children of varying levels of reading comfort to nonfiction and research formats.