Read, Rhyme, and Romp: Early Literacy Skills and Activities for Librarians, Teachers, and Parents

by Heather McNeil

Encouraging a love of reading in young children can be a source of both great frustration and immense joy. This handy resource provides essential tips, techniques, and strategies for making early literacy development fun and inspiring a lifelong love of reading.

"Read, Rhyme, and Romp: Early Literacy Skills and Activities for Librarians, Teachers, and ParentS" explores the six basic pre-literacy skills that experts agree are necessary for a young child to be ready to learn to read. Special sections within each chapter are dedicated to the specific needs of preschool teachers, parents, and librarians, making the content relevant to different settings. Recommended book lists, personal anecdotes, and literacy-rich activities combine to create an effective and accessible plan for implementing an early literacy program.

Genres: Nonfiction

230 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2012

Reviews

[Jenna (Falling Letters)]

For the first few chapters of this book, I thought it had some good tips but was primarily geared towards parents (I was reading for the librarian perspective). Then I got to the story time chapter and was very happy to find it contained exactly what I was hoping for. I am sure I will be frequently referencing McNeil's recommended book lists in the near future... Overall, this is a practical volume describing many easily actionable practices.

[Rachel]

I'm a library technician and do storytimes regularly. This book has great information if you are just starting out and wondering how exactly to go about performing a fun, educational storytime. Great song suggestions, resource lists and personal anecdotes.

[Kristina Walker]

Good resource book if you are just starting out and not familiar with early literacy and books. It had a section in each chapter for parents as well as many lists of books.

[Ariel Cummins]

Excellent book that covers the basics of early childhood literacy. Lots of information about the development of readers, and concrete examples of things librarians, preschool teachers, and parents can do. I think for experienced children's librarians, this might contain a lot of information they already know, but I'd definitely recommend it to perspective children's librarians, librarians who don't work with children primarily and want to know more, and parents who are curious how to best expose their kids to books, reading, and writing.

[Elaine Bearden]

Good material for parents working on language skills with their children. Also has ideas for librarians and teachers. Graphics not as nice as other books, but information is really good. Includes other resources at the end -books and websites, like the Colorado Early Learning intiative. Includes quotes from studies, like this one:, (p.31) Research demonstrates that what determines academically successful children is the amount of language or talk that they hear per hour from adults in the first few years of life." (citing a study by Drs. Betty Hart and Todd Risley)

[Jen]

some of this was information I already knew, some of it was good to learn. Some of the rhymes and class ideas were new to me. I appreciate the bibliographies set around different themes, etc. The back includes some statistics.

[Brittany]

This is one of the best early literacy books that I've read. There were so many excellent book recommendations and advice given. It was incredibly helpful to read from the perspective of a librarian and parent.

[Michelle]

A superb guide for the Every Child Ready to Read program. Several different ideas for fun programs for young children. I'm glad I found this book; I will be purchasing it ASAP.