to think reading scheme books should be about subject interesting to young children.

[JesusChristBenton]

Five year old DD has been sent home with an Oxford Reading Tree book about Bands. It has pages of text about the drummer "laying down the beats", Destiny's Child not paying their own instruments, the formation of the Beatles (with long lists of their hits), Gnarls Berkley's first single getting to number one etc etc

DD is 5 FFS.

She does not know what a single is, has no concept of the charts, lists of names of Beatles songs bore her to tears, the fact that Mick Jagger has been in The Rolling Stones for 50 years is incomprehensible to her.

These books are aimed at y1 kids. What is wrong with fairy tales stories that might actually catch their imagination?

We haven't had any buff and chip recently and dd is really fed up. They seem to have disappeared since reception. Pm benchmarks have very dull stories in comparison. And the non fiction seems to come in themed runs-five books in a row about nocturnal animals!!

We choose our own books instead of the school books most days (either purchased or library books), so that DS2 is only reading the "chip/floppy/etc" books twice a week when they are sent home for reading homework. I've found that some of the references go right over his head, and some of the situations or comments are either slightly outdated or a bit off, IMO. And, as I said, DS2 just doesn't like the magic-key aspect of it.

at the furtive handlebar 'tash man in the bushes.

I'm not that familiar with ORT but some of my ex-colleagues who were teaching assistants would swear blind there were pictorial magic mushroom / cannabis references in them. The illustrations might have changed since my day though.

Or biff and chip even