{"id":449905,"date":"2026-09-01T11:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T11:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/449905\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T11:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T11:54:21","slug":"the-san-diego-central-library-has-a-new-collection-of-books-for-beginning-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/449905\/","title":{"rendered":"The San Diego Central Library has a new collection of books for beginning readers"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Neelum Arya\u2019s daughter was four years old, she had trouble matching letters to sounds. She has dyslexia, and Arya started looking for resources.<\/p>\n

She learned about decodable books<\/a>. They focus on specific letter and sound combinations. Kids build on those skills as they move through a series of books.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a general perception that if you simply read to your children often enough that your children will learn how to read, almost automatically,\u201d Arya said. \u201cBut just like we can listen to a lot of Mozart and not become a piano player, it’s the same thing here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arya worked with literacy advocates to bring a new collection of decodable books to the San Diego Central Library.<\/p>\n

Decodables help kids learn how to sound out new words, rather than guessing. That builds their confidence, said Emily Derry, the supervising librarian for youth and family services at the San Diego Public Library.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can look at the words and figure it out, and then they get excited and confident,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Decodable<\/p>\n

Decodable books teach kids letter and sound combinations in a sequence. This book introduces them to blends, where two consonants are next to each other.<\/p>\n

Parents teaching their kids how to read might look for books labeled \u201cbeginner.\u201d The sentences might be simple, but kids might run into roadblocks when trying to read letter combinations they haven\u2019t seen before.<\/p>\n

Now, parents will have access to books specifically designed to help kids learn phonics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that we’ve been wanting to do for a while, because we know that it’s hard to find books in the collection that meet the children where they’re at,\u201d Derry said.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This book is labeled as a beginner book, but if kids haven’t learned about “th” or “ng” sounds yet, they might get stuck on words like “Thursday” or “hang.”<\/p>\n

When Arya met other parents whose kids needed extra support with reading, she lent them her decodable books. Having them at the library will make them more accessible to families, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m absolutely thrilled this is available,\u201d Arya said. \u201cI hope that we can see every single library in San Diego County create some similar resource.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Neelum Arya\u2019s daughter was four years old, she had trouble matching letters to sounds. She has dyslexia,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-449905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}