Narwhal and Jelly

I’ve shared before about Bash’s struggles with reading. He had a speech delay, and while he has successfully “graduated” from his speech therapy, it’s also caused a delay in his reading that we’re still working on. 

He lacks confidence in himself, and gets frustrated with reading because he struggles with it. I know he’s more than capable, but I need him to believe it too, and that’s something that we’ve really had a hard time with. He loves being read to, but I have to search long and hard to find something that he wants to read enough to read himself. 

Enter Narwhal and Jelly. I found them while browsing the shelves at the bookstore looking for something that might interest him. Anything with animals is always promising, and bonus points if it’s ocean animals, so I was quick to pick them up. I was instantly drawn to the illustrations, and liked the fact that, while they are chapter books, they are written in a comic style that I thought Bash would find appealing. At least, I hoped he would. 

We tried the first one out at the library first. Instead of just having him try to read it alone we decided to treat it kind of like a script. We’d take “parts” and each take turns reading for our character. (He chose Jelly and assigned Narwhal to me. Any additional characters we took turns with.) 

It worked! 

Not only was he very willingly reading with me, even while struggling over some words or phrases, but he was begging to read “Just a few more pages!” every night! He didn’t hesitate to tackle whole pages of dialog in his eagerness to see what was happening next, and when we came to the end of the first book he asked to read it again! We read it to the family! My boy, who refused to read in front of other people because he was worried he’d make a mistake, found a book he wanted to share with his siblings and daddy too. 

Needless to say, all four books in the series joined our home library on his birthday last August. When we aren’t rereading them they are displayed in a place of honor on his shelf, two at each end, right next to his plush “Narwhal” and “Jelly” who were welcomed on Christmas. He regularly asks me if there are any new books coming out. What he doesn’t know is that the author, Ben Clanton, just announced today the release date for the 5th book in the series! Unfortunately, it won’t be out until after his August birthday with a September 8th release, but it will certainly find its way under our tree this year. 

Until I had a child who struggled with reading (Parker will devour anything you put in front of him, and always has.) I didn’t understand how magical that breakthrough book or series could be. Narwhal and Jelly have been magic for my boy, and they are certainly beloved members of the family.