This series focuses on word families featuring short vowels and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) spelling patterns to reinforce early decoding skills while emphasizing onset and rime. Each cover is bright and cheerful, featuring die-cut photographs of animals that highlight the corresponding word family. The stories are simple yet engaging, offering themes that prompt inferential questions. For example, “Dog Jog” is a delightful and humorous story with sentences like “The dog jogs with clogs in the bog.” There’s plenty to discuss, thanks to the illustrations, which provide opportunities for making inferences and connecting to prior knowledge. The vocabulary and story structure are sophisticated, enhancing the reading experience. Each book introduces a new word family, allowing children to expand their understanding progressively. The practice activities before and after the stories are valuable for previewing and extending phonics knowledge. The varied sentence structures and inclusion of dialogue and different types of punctuation help readers enhance their understanding of text features. VERDICT: A successful set for introducing word families.