Book excerpt: The high-interest, low-vocabulary stories in this book feature diversified subject matter, including: current personalities, popular sports figures and events, ghosts, monsters, and mysteries, visual and performing arts, disasters, excerpts from legends and mythology, and amazing facts and wonders in science and nature. The stories are written with a controlled vocabulary averaging two readability levels below the content. A male-female, ethnic, and geographic balance has been maintained in the selections. Follow-up questions reinforce key comprehension skills. These include: recognition of main idea, significant details, word meaning in context, inference, and drawing conclusions. Thoughtful discussions and on-going projects can be generated from many of the stories. Where space permits, a follow-through activity has been included to lead to self-motivated reading or to valuable discussion, also allowing the teacher opportunity to award extra credit.