New 2025 Release!

Written by Leslie Vaughn

Artwork by Erika Villarreal Bunce

Student edition (224 pgs) $18.95 (discount with purchase of 5 or more)

Teacher edition (300 pgs) $29.95

Classroom pack (teacher edition + 25 student editions) $400.00 (20% discount), additional student editions available for $15 each with purchase of classroom pack.

plus media mail shipping 

Just the Beginning  is a collection of six highly decodable, sequential short stories to help teachers and tutors move struggling middle or high school students up the ladder of reading. 

It begins with the short vowel A, single syllable selection, “I AM A MAN,” about the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike, and ends with a mixed short vowel chapter story which contains predivided mul∙ti∙syl∙lab∙ic words about two children escaping slavery. 

Topics include civil rights, segregation, slavery, incarceration, police brutality, and American identity.

Just the Beginning is crafted to be

• supportive of teachers of low skilled readers
• highly decodable and sequential
• consistent with the science of reading
• compelling for teenagers and adults 
• culturally responsive
• emotionally and socially complex
• professionally illustrated
• flexible

Teacher edition contains 

• Word and Skills Lists of what students need to know to be able to decode each story.
• Brief Historical Context to provide the background knowledge necessary for full comprehension.
• Discussion Questions for text, illustrations, and iconic historic photographs
• Ideas for Further Investigation which invite students to reflect, explore, and share 

Written by Leslie Vaughn

Artwork by Lamarr Sanders

$24.95

Classroom pack, 26 copies, 20% discount, $520

Bus Stop Blues (124 pgs) explores the experience of the older struggling reader from the perspectives of the three groups most directly impacted: kids, parents, and teachers. Most importantly, though, it is written as a decodable so the very same struggling readers whose experience it describes can actually read it. It is an example of the kind of reading material those readers deserve: decodable at an early elementary level, culturally relevant and emotionally impactful at an older level, with mature content and artwork, bound and printed on high quality paper with a cover design that does not betray. The paintings are lush, expressive, with layers of depth and symbolism,  done by an artist who was himself a struggling reader and had to fight to attain his own literacy. This is a book he would have been proud to have in his backpack. Multisyllable words are predivided to ease fluency, full sound charts located in back for reference.