Bungalo Books has added three titles to their New Reader Series, launched in 1997. The audience for beginning readers is wide, ranging from toddlers to remedial learners in Grade 2. This series defines a workable middle path – somewhere between the simplicity of Pat the Bunny and the more sophisticated silliness of Amelia Bedelia – that should please both sexes, a wide age range, and parents and children.

Promoted as zany, the books are perhaps better characterized as charmingly reassuring – closer to P.D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother? than the wildness of The Cat in the Hat. They feature clear design and a consistent layout. In each title, the cast of monkey, lion, rhino, snake, and ostrich repeat a simple pattern (“I am hungry, when can I eat?,” “I am dirty, I want to be clean,” and “I am new, may I play with you?”), which is neatly resolved in the final pages by the red-haired keeper in her familiar Wellingtons. The end papers add delightful cameos – of the monkey washing a sink full of dishes, or dancing away with a frog on piggyback.

The books are attractive and accessible, but perhaps more effective as picture books than beginning readers. Each title features a small visual dictionary (at the front of the book) of words that, surprisingly, aren’t used in the stories. This non-integrated vocabulary list is odd. Why not define “frog,” “giraffe,” and “monkey,” instead of the word tadpole, which never appears in the story? In contrast to this apparent teaching device, the simple two-sentence format of the story is easily memorized, which encourages mastery, but leads to little active decoding.

However, the format is highly expandable, and more series titles (or another level) may be in the works. According to the Bungalobooks.com web site, the partnership now has 28 books and 1.5 million copies in print. These three new titles (also available in Spanish) are sure to add to the momentum, and Bungalo’s far-flung partnership (Edwards lives in Canada, Bianchi in Arizona) should continue to flourish. Which is a good thing.