Teach Your Cild to Read In 100 Easy Lessons
By Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, and Elaine Brunner
Published by Fireside.

            Teaching Your Child to Read In 100 Easy Lessons (Visit Their site)  is an adaption of  the Distar (Direct Instruction System for Teaching,  Achievement and Remediation) reading program developed in the 1960s by Bereiter and Engelmann for lower income students who were lagging  behind their peers.  This book is based largely on a phonics approach but blends in some whole language approaches to make this an eclectic approach to reading that you can use at home.  True to the Distar approach, the book gives the teacher or parent a very tightly scripted lesson to present to their child.  While this may feel constraining, it can also be a comfort to know that you are presenting the lesson in the exact same way they would be getting it from a teacher using the Distar approach.

Children easily move step–by–step with phonics (sounds for letters) and learn the essential skills (left out of other phonics programs) to blend the sounds into words. Built on this unique phonics foundation, children quickly start to read those words in fully illustrated stories. This book was designed to be user–friendly for parents, grandparents, tutors or others who want to teach young (3– to 6–year old) non–readers. The book contains 100 twenty–minute lessons that are clearly color–coded and scripted (including how to motivate, teach, and correct) so that both you and the child you are teaching can be successful. teaches pronunciation and simple phonics, then supplements it with progressive texts and practice in directed reading. The end result of this mixed (phonetic and whole language) method is a casually phonetic student, a much better first-time pronouncer and speller, who still also has look-say acquisition, quick fluency and comprehension. Using an eclectic method, students can select their preferred learning style. This lets all students make progress. How successful is this progress? After kids complete the 100 lessons they read on a solid second grade level.

Rather simply review this book, I have used this book to teach all 8 of my children to read, and I can say that the system is very simple to use and your child will learn how to read.  The lessons are very scripted right down to the words you are to say to your child, and you do need to commit to doing the lessons regularly in order for your child to retain the material from the previous lesson.  The learning of phonics rules come without pain and the presentation of sentences and stories for your child to read come early in the book and offer a lot of reinforcement (reward) for the skills they are developing, it is fun to see your child enjoy discovering that they can actually read something.  Most of my children actually looked forward to their lessons and at times would seek me out with the book in hand. One of my daughters saw I was doing a review of the book and she said "Thats a good book!" 

All but one of my children have turned out to be strong readers and will read for enjoyment with the exception of one who happens to struggle with reading on the whole, but even he will read when presented with material of his liking.  I think that you will find that all reviews of this book are highly favorable, and I would agree, this is a great book.