Early Active Readers

An early active reader is a child who is discovering his or her love of books, enjoys being challenged with 'bigger' books and most importantly, still 'reads' a large part of any story through pictures. It is not really a coincidence that children are introduced to the 'first novel' book at this time. While they thoroughly have fun 'reading' a 'novel' (as they associate it with being grown up), 'first novel' books do not typically provide much of a reading challenge for them.

At this stage, there is a strong connection between words and pictures. Imagery is an integral part of the reading process as it plays a vital role in aiding in story comprehension while challenging the reader with advanced word usage and sentence structures. However, the general progression for kids books tends to go like this:
The Louie the Lobster series of which 'Louie the Lobster in What is a friend?' is the first release, was developed to address what I believe to be this gap in children's books available today. By keeping imagery an integral part of the reading and learning process, we are also able to more effectively 'talk' about more challenging subjects (bullying, peer pressure) that our children face in their everyday lives.