Book excerpt: Discover a love of reading with the Smithsonian! Smithsonian Readers: Seriously Amazing Level 2 provides accessible and engaging content designed to encourage further progress in children’s reading abilities. Developed in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and esteemed childhood literacy expert Dr. Adria Klein, Seriously Amazing Level 2 encourages development in readers with unfamiliar vocabulary terms, new phonic structures, and more variation in sentence patterns. Seriously Amazing Level 2 contains six 32-page topics, chosen for their appeal to developing readers: Nighttime Animals, Sea Life, Dinosaurs, Solar System, Baby Animals, and the Human Body. Thirty-six perforated fact cards extend the learning and reading practice. Level 2: Developing Readers -Simple factual texts with mostly familiar themes and content -Concepts in text are supported by images -Includes glossary to reinforce reading comprehension -Repetition of basic sentence structure with variation of placement of subjects, verbs, and adjectives -Mostly easy vocabulary familiar to kindergarteners and first graders -Introduction to new phonic structures -Integration of contractions, possessives, compound sentences, and some three-syllable words