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Ladies,

I am in need of your advice about the storytime readers for Beyond. I am planning to use Beyond next year with my dd, who will be 6 this summer. She is doing awesome in Little and loving the stories (and not complaining at all about the content or covers). She is very particular about what books we check out of the library; they all must be girly in nature! So, that makes me lean toward the Girls package. On the other hand, there are great stories out there that aren't "girly" and I want her to have exposure to them.

So, here's my thinking...
1. I could go with the Classics, and let her continue to choose more "girly" tiltle for pleasure reading.
2. I could go with the Girl titles and eliminate any possible arguments or fussing when she sees the book cover.
3. Order the Classics and read those for school, and order the Girl tiltles and have her read those for pleasure during the genre.

I do plan to use Beyond with my son in a few years, so having the Classics to reuse would be beneficial.

What would you do? Would you let her have her preference, or just only read the classics? All of the books are great, and I wouldn't have a problem with her reading all of them!

I ended up getting the girl package for Bigger for dd (after doing a mix-n-match of all 3 sets for her in Beyond ). Either way works, but I found the classic set to require a bit more mature listener. When we had some trouble with with classic books, I would try to find the audio cd at the library since that just adds some extra spark to it (kinda like doing assignments on the white board just makes it so much more interesting ) They are all excellent books, but I'll likely have to get the boy pack for ds when he gets to Beyond and up-- that's just more awesome books in my home library!

My dd turned 6 last summer and we have used Beyond this year for 1st grade. We got almost all of the books at the library so we were able to pick and choose more easily. We have read all of the girl titles so far and also a couple of the classic ones. We are VERY happy with the book selections.

Judy

If it were me, I'd let her read the girly books for school.

For Beyond I plan on reading from one set of books for school and then mixing and matching with books from the library for our free read aloud time. I'm with about the classics, I also have a younger ds who will be using the same books down the road so I am leaning towards buying the classics for school. It may also be beneficial for your dd to have the girly books to look forward to during reading for pleasure time.

Cindi,

The ladies are doing a good job of helping you talk through ideas. There's no one right answer here, so any of the scenarios you mentioned would work! That makes choosing so difficult, doesn't it!

I did want to chime in and agree that the classic books do take a more seasoned listener, so since your daughter is so young you may want to lean toward the girl books as read-alouds this time around just to keep her interest and enthusiasm going. Just a thought.
Blessings,
Carrie