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Welcome to Totally Literate

We warmly invite you to explore our Totally Literate website. We hope you’ll enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed creating it. We’d like you to come often and stay long as you or yours achieve steady progress toward a full complement of literacy skills.

Totally Literate is built on our flagship vessel, The Red Well‑Read Reader — 361 rhyming stories that systematically cover the entire phonological makeup of the English language. Typically, each story has one distinctly marked predominant rhyme that keeps decoding constant while presenting subject matter that is, at times highbrow — slightly over the heads of students. To wit—

Story 1: Nabbed

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"No thanks, no sweets!" said Doctor McNabb. "Not a slab, not even a dab. You see I am trying to lose some flab. Therefore, I eat just crab and I drink just Tab. Now please bring me my bill, or call it a tab if you will. But let’s not confab, or in other words gab – for I must hasten back to my lab."

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As his waitress left to tally his tab, McNabb continued to blab, saying something about taking a stab at not paying his tab.

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Then he fled outside and quickly grabbed a cab. But thanks to the police, he was soon nabbed, a criminal tabbed.

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From then on his life was dreary and drab.

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​​This unique combination ensures that slow learners remain confident, never overwhelmed, neither disheartened nor dejected. The typical singular predominant rhyme gives them assurance that they truly can read, as they decode successfully time after time.

 

As for fast learners, they will never become bored or disengaged. The occasional highbrow content is not such a high hurdle. They will sense the humor, see it in their teacher’s face, and hear it in her tongue‑in‑cheek delivery. Even though they will realize that there’s a joke that’s over their heads, they will giggle and laugh in bemusement despite not grasping it fully. (Generally, all the stories are jocular due to their rhyming nature.)

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To all parents, teachers, and students around the world, we bid you the warmest welcome.

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