Teach Primary Issue 19.5

OF BOOKS Original stories and natural language have helped to make Big Cat the enduringly effective reading programme it is today, says Lee Newman ... I was the last person in the office on Christmas Eve, 2004, quietly checking off minor file corrections for an urgent reprint of the first phase of Collins Big Cat, scheduled to publish on 5 January 2005. I remember feeling simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated – all 100 titles had gone to press on time, and we’d already sold the first print run. The beginning of Big Cat Big Cat was a high-profile project for HarperCollins’ Education division, meticulously researched and developed by publisher Jill Cornish and commissioning editor Eddie Rippeth, who shared a vision for combining the qualities of children’s picturebooks with the rigour of a levelled reading programme. Abandoning the traditional model of a small team of authors and illustrators writing schematic books, they brought an unprecedented level of originality to the project, commissioning a different author and illustrator pairing for almost every book. The end result was 100 titles in a range of formats and genres, featuring a dazzling array of leading authors, illustrators and photographers, and offering excitement, choice and agency to their waiting readers. We were a small team of just four, supported by a huge external range of freelance commissioning editors, proofreaders, editors, designers, and picture researchers. In constant contact, we were able to draw on that vast well of experience, such as the creative skills of our design managers, Nikki Kenwood and Niki Merrett; elevating the quality and setting a new industry standard for children’s reading books. One of the most important contributors to the entire project was the series editor, Cliff Moon. A former teacher, lecturer, author and respected literacy expert, Cliff’s annual guide to Individualised Reading (National Centre for Language and Literacy) was regarded as an indispensable listing of the readability levels of thousands of children’s books. This and other reading taxonomies informed the development of Big Cat’s finely graded reading progression, that takes children from pre-reading, with wordless, illustrated titles to fluent readers of 80-page books. Drawing on his own teaching experience, Cliff wanted children to develop their skills while reading for pleasure, believing that children need autonomy as readers; that they have more inherent preferences and knowledge than we often give them credit for; and that we should trust them to read what they want. He believed that if we trusted them to choose books written in natural language, with all its nuances and oddities, we would be giving them the best possible start to their journey as readers – and we have stayed true to the principles he enshrined in the programme. The legacy Those principles are acutely relevant today, where research reveals children’s growing disengagement with the act of reading. Only 32 per cent of five to 10-year-olds frequently choose to read for enjoyment, down from 55 per cent in “We aim to give children wide exposure to different forms of literature” The power T EACH PR I MARY I N PARTNERSH I P W I TH 44 | www.teachwire.net