Rating: *** 3 stars

Angie Kotler, Christine Parker and Stephen Parker,
Imran Visits His Auntie.
Making a Book.
At School.
Hide and Seek.
Eid.
Imran and Alia at the Wedding.
Wali Khan.
Irene Fernandez.
Alia Goes to Pakistan.
In the City.
Idrees Visits His Cousin Ali.
Ramadan.
I Went to the Market.
Weddings.
On the Road.
Education Bradford, 2002.
(available from Maralyn Dewar, Future House, Bolling Road, Bradford BD4 7EB, UK)

This series of 15 books provides a reading scheme which offers the opportunity for use in different ways within multicultural classrooms. It provides background knowledge and insight into cultural diversity at a very simple and basic level. These books are also of particular interest to children with a cultural connection to Pakistan whether they are new immigrants or first generation children born in the UK. This set of books can therefore be used to motivate such children to read something they can relate to. This should help them contribute in a meaningful way to classroom discussions, thereby helping to stress the relevance of learning to home life in general.

They are suitable for early readers from the foundation stage to key stage 1 for guided reading. The books are graded 1-6 in order of difficulty based on the criteria in ‘Bookbands for Guided Reading’ as recommended by the National Literacy Strategy, which thereby takes into consideration the overall demands of the text. The books have a ‘controlled vocabulary’ which ranges from 31 -157 words. Sufficient repetition of these words is present which is appropriately tailored to each age group.

There is also a separate teachers' guide to the text which offers additional background information, suggestions and ideas for each of the 15 books including notes for teachers who would want to use them for foundation and key stage 1 reading. The key vocabulary section is translated into several other languages which help make children aware of other languages and of cultural diversity.

Three books are illustrated with watercolour pictures and the remaining ones have well researched and relevant photographs. The text is simple, clear and in a handwritten font. These attributes help make the books very appealing to children.

Khalida Alvi