The creativity never stops at Disney Publishing and July holds evermore fun for young readers with the following incoming books.
World of Reading: Maleficent (now available)
In Maleficent, the sweeping, dark-spirited villain from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty explains the powers of an evil fairy and has some tricky fun with party invitations.
This book is a level one reader from World of Reading. World of Reading provides emerging readers with books that aim to inspire and excite them, featuring well-known characters they know and love. Each level is designed to help readers navigate the world of reading at the right pace.
The levels are broken down as follows:
Level Pre-1: Designed for readers-in-training at the Pre-K to Kindergarten level. Level Pre-1 contains easy vocabulary, word repetition and short, simple sentences.
Level 1: Designed for beginner readers at the Kindergarten to Grade 1 level. Level 1 contains simple text and word repetition.
Level 2: Designed for junior readers at the Grade 1 to Grade 2 level. Level 2 contains simple story lines, compound sentences and contractions.
Level 3: Designed for what World of Reading calls the ‘Super Reader.’ The Super Reader is aimed at readers in the Grade 2 to Grade 3 level. Level 3 contains paragraphs, suspenseful story lines and character development.
Disney’s interest in pushing all things Villains is reinforced with the release of this book. I expect other familiar villains will follow in this series and likely at different reader levels. I enjoyed the first-person use of language, especially for young readers who are big fans of the villains more than the princesses. It allows the reader to get to know the villain in a way that the films do not portray. Overall, this book is a nice addition to the growing Disney Villains book collection that seems to be targeting younger and younger age groups.
5-Minute Villains Stories (available July 13)
5-Minute Villains Stories invites the reader to follow Captain Hook’s shadow around the Darling nursery; visit a fortune-teller with Jafar, take a trip to the zoo with Cruella and much more.
The book is a collection of 12 original stories featuring Disney’s most notorious villains. Each story is ideal for reading aloud in five minutes which makes story time possible at bedtime, breakfast time or any time.
Most Disney compilation books, including this one, make a lovely gift and are beautifully laid out. The illustrations are inviting and colorful, and the stories themselves are both interesting and short enough to be a reliable go-to addition to any young reader’s bookshelf.
The Disney Villains push here again invites families and children to explore the world through the eyes of Disney Villains. I expect that, as a child, I would have been interested to learn about the perspectives and motivations of Disney Villains, in addition to the sweet Disney Princess stories that many of us have been traditionally brought up on.
Both above books provide fresh and new content for young readers and their families. Classic characters are expertly used to draw in mass interest, but the stories themselves are wholly original, providing a wicked spinoff from traditional Disney fairytales.