Rich Fare for Little Ones

Published by Tulika, the Thumb Thumb Books series uses everyday contexts and everyday vocabulary to lend confidence to a child beginning to read. These beginner readers are a set of ten colorful books meant to capture the imagination of four year olds (and up), and satisfy their urge to be able to read. The series is created with thumbprint characters.

Developmentally speaking, a child first listens to narrations and then moves on to see pictures of the narrations. Then comes the stage where simple correlation of picture to word is transcended and the child wants to read to get the nuances of the narration. Learning to read hence has to first make the child feel that he or she has fluency of language and understands the situation as well. It is here that the thumbprint characters Thambi and Thangi, exploring their world, enter the arena. 

The informal style of narration in these books wherein everyday experiences are talked about invite a child to read. Most reading books have repetitive words that make a child read without even looking at the word. But in this series, Tulika seems to have largely kept the repetitive sentence structure out and kept it closer to the spoken, so that the reading is more spontaneous. Each time a child picks up a book, he/she discovers the joy of reading ‘9 to 1’ by Niveditha Subramanian, the first book in the series, goes backwards in numbers and finally brings in Thambi to welcome the rain. All the characters in the book built around the thumbprint are captivating.