I wrote I SPY SCHOOL because my editor Ken Geist at Scholastic suggested the title. I liked the idea, and enjoyed help from my sons Dan Marzollo and Dave Marzollo. They looked through all of Walter Wick's wonderful I SPY photos and found pictures that related to children's experience in school. They also ghost-wrote the fantastic riddles that really help kids read. "Ruler" may be a hard word for beginning readers to read, but when they see the picture of the ruler right next to the word, they can not only read the word "ruler," they can also study the letters in "ruler" to see how they can be sounded out. As of August 2012, there were eighteen I SPY Level 1 Readers!
I Spy School is part of the Scholastic Readers series that are based on the best research about how children learn to read. The books give readers simple instructions on which objects they spy in each picture. Readers can sound out the text and decipher the riddles with help from the detailed pictures that are included. In addition to helping build a love of reading, this particular I Spy book includes key concepts that can be used to explain school routines—such as spying for supplies and letters. Parents can tease out concepts from the pictures that will explain how school "works" - THE CHILDREN'S BOOK REVIEW
