My "g" Sound Box Book

A little girl fills her sound box with many words beginning with the letter "g".

Children's Literature

The books that constitute the "Sound Box" library are attractively packaged with colorful illustrations on crisp white pages. The series has been designed and written to teach phonics and words that have the appropriate sounds. The format is the same for each letter of the alphabet and includes blends as well as short and long vowels. The opening and closing pages are filled with the featured letter; the title page shows a young child with a box full of objects that start with the featured letter sound. There is a note explaining what the book concentrates on. For example, in the "g" book it notes, "This book uses only the hard "g" sound in the story line. Blends are included. Words beginning with the soft "g" sound are included at the end of the book." Some of the stories are better than others but the premise is the same. The little girl in this story collects goats, grass and grapes for her box but the goats are a hungry lot and eat them all up. She doesn't give up and finds a gorilla, guitar and even a goose that lays a golden egg. The final pages recap all of the words for the featured letter in the story, introduce new words and when appropriate, if there is another sound associated with the letter, pages introduce those words. For "g," words such as giraffe, gerbil and gingerbread introduce the hard sound which is more like a "j." 2001, The Child's World, $21.36. Ages 5 to 7. Reviewer: Marilyn Courtot