Milo’s Birthday Surprise

Maureen Pollard’s most recent publication Milo’s Birthday Surprise is both an engaging picture story book and an alphabet book for beginning readers.

The book reflects the author’s detailed knowledge of the research into how children learn to read and her many years of experience in motivating and teaching children to become fluent readers who enjoy good literature. As children progress through the book they are able to develop an understanding of the Alphabetic principle and practise some of the phonological skills essential for reading success.

 The main character of the book is Milo.  He is having a birthday and is keen to have his friends come and  celebrate with him. Each friend he invites is busy! The scene is set and the story continues.

Children are quickly drawn into the book by the clear, colourful pictures of the characters, the familiar topic of birthday parties and the development of an age appropriate problem to be resolved.

The author has cleverly used repetition of phrases to encourage the children to predict some of the text and actively participate in reading the book. Before each page is turned they hear “So Milo rings…..” It is not long before the children are confidently joining in.

The book also engages children at another level. Children who are learning the letters of the alphabet and the sounds each letter makes are given many opportunities to hear each sound and match it to the correct letter. Alliteration in the text is used cleverly so the children hear the sound repeatedly. For example, the book begins with “It is a Monday morning in March and it’s Milo the monkey’s birthday.”

Each double page introduces a new character with clear and colourful illustrations, alliterative text and many items beginning with the focus sound. Daisy the dog’s pages have a dog, a daisy, a Dalmation a dandelion, dice, a diplodocus dinosaur, a dog-door, a door, a doughnut, a drawing and  a drawing pin to find.

The use of a rich vocabulary is an additional benefit of this book. At the end of the book there is a glossary of words that may be new to beginning and young readers.  The children can be encouraged to acknowledge the words they do not know, discuss the word with the person who is reading the book and even check to see if it is in the glossary at the back of the book. This is an important part of developing reading comprehension and enhancing language development.

Milo’s Birthday Surprise has a storyline which young children can identify with, an interactive style and opportunity for skill based learning which is based on current evidence based research. . It is a wonderful resource for parents grandparents, teachers and librarians who want to assist beginning readers to develop the necessary skills  and to develop a love of reading.

Glenda Lingard is a speech pathologist and teacher, and is currently the Head of Extension and Learning Support at Barbreck, the Junior school at St Catherine's School, Toorak.