Raisin Reads is a column with thoughts on children’s literature straight from the mind of a kid!
About the author: Raisin is five years old. He likes to read, and he wants to be a construction worker when he grows up.
I like Mercy Watson to the Rescue because when the fire department comes, Mr. and Mrs. Watson think Mercy called the fire department! But she did not! Eugenia Lincoln called the fire department instead!
Mercy is a pig. In Eugenia’s opinion, pigs belong on a farm. Mercy does not live on a farm. She lives in a house. Eugenia does not like Mercy because of that. At the end, Eugenia still does not like Mercy. But Mr. and Mrs. Watson like Mercy. They think she is a porcine wonder because they think she called the fire department.
My favorite part is the very end of the book. I think other people would like the book too.
Mom’s thoughts: Raisin read this book by himself, then he listened to it and read it at the same time. I am a big fan of audiobooks, and for a beginning reader, listening and reading together helped him recognize words, learn correct pronunciation (he had not encountered phrases like “porcine wonder” before), and better grasp the big picture of the story. The Mercy Watson series is a perfect follow up to shorter early readers like Mr. Putter and Tabby and Henry and Mudge. Mercy Watson’s story is longer (it has twelve chapters) but the sentences are well geared toward a young child beginning to read. There are a few sentences on each page, and the type is large. As in the early chapter books I mentioned, most two-page spreads have a color illustration. In Mercy Watson, these are illustrated by Chris Van Dusen, and there are also a few full two-page illustrations in the book. This makes it very accessible for the early reader too. There is something about color illustrations and large text that say “Come read me, I’m not that hard!” Besides all that, the story is fun!
What other chapter books for early readers are like this? We’re looking for large text and color illustrations, and yet less than 100 pages and plenty of easily accessible amusing story!
Raisin narrated the above review to me. Do you have any comments for him? I’ll pass along any messages.
I forgot about this series. I bought DiCamillo’s Christmas book for a gift this year, but should get these at some point. 🙂
Hello Raisin! My son (4 years old) and I enjoyed your post very much, we love Kate DiCamillo. Have you read the Tale of Despereaux? That’s also a great book. I wish we lived close to a library, we’d go check out Mercy Watson right away. We’ll have to look for an e-book version of it; we live in Africa and new books are difficult to get!
Thanks for all your recommendations too Rebecca, I always especially like these Raisin reads posts since they give me good ideas on specific books for my kids to find and download when I can. That’s very helpful.
Natasha » Raisin and I have not read The Tale of Despereaux yet! Thank you for the suggestion. I hope you can find Mercy Watson. It is a lot of fun!