7Kate and her friend Mike skate. This B-level story uses decodable text to raise confidence in early readers. The book features long a sounds, and uses a combination of sight words and long-vowel words in repetition to build recognition. Original illustrations help guide readers through the text. Author Cecilia Minden, PhD, a literacy consultant and former director of the Language and Literacy program at Harvard Graduate School of Education developed a specific format for this series. Books in this series include author biography, phonetics, and teaching guides.