If you’re teaching, building a collection, or hoping to learn more, one doorway into the world of kid lit is via authors. An author study can also be a good way to help learners explore literature. They frequently create a reading ladder, helping readers increase their reading comprehension and graduate to more complex works.

Take a look at Kate DiCamillo‘s extensive corpus, for example. DiCamillo has picture books, early readers, chapter books, and even anthologies. An author study of DiCamillo, allows older readers to return to picture books. If your classroom culture accepts picture books (including teacher read-alouds) as a legitimate area of study, all readers are supported.

There’s more to author studies than just reading their work. I’ll pick up that topic next time.