I See is the first book in the Early Readers book series. Each sentence in the book uses the same sentence structure, which results in a high level of predictability throughout the book to increase confidence. Beginning readers rely more heavily on context cues as they are learning to read, so this book offers a higher level of context support, whereas the later books in the series have less context support. For example, the first sentence for each animal always starts with “I see” followed by a single animal, while the second sentence always introduces the main color of the animal. The third sentence introduces a second of the same animal to help emphasize the concept of two while the fourth sentence introduces an action. The fifth sentence includes a descriptor for the animal or context of the action. Even the introduction of the colors are chosen based on their difficulty as basic sight words and have a within-text color prompt. For example, the word yellow is printed in yellow ink. The actions are also based on basic pre-K and kindergarten sight words. The illustrations in this book are simpler than in the following books, where each illustration here reflects each change in the text as it progresses.
The developmental skills that are highlighted in this book are understanding the concepts of one and two as an introduction to basic math and counting concepts. This book also introduces the concept of common colors, one of a child’s first academic concepts to develop. Furthermore, this book emphasizes developing a beginning vocabulary of verbs and action concepts. This book is designed to support reading comprehension activities of answering “what” questions and supporting the introduction of “what doing” questions, two of the first questions children often learn to ask and answer. This book also offers an introduction into the concept of plurals, which is another important developmental milestone.
