Planet Wobble is a new series of reading materials for early readers and key stage 1. Using the multimedia facilities of Clicker 4 software, which offers children on-screen facilities like letter grids to help them form words, the Wobble series provides animated talking books. These come with related on-screen activities in harmony with modern literacy strategies and, in addition, provide an additional classroom resource for developing early reading and writing skills.

The series comes in three packs representing three levels. In each pack you get a CD containing three talking books with on-screen activities and three printed books. However, in order to use the Planet Wobble series, you need to have Clicker 4 installed on your computer (pound;90 single user - pound;50 upgrade from previous version).

The series is based on the fictional Planet Wobble, and young readers follow the adventures of the characters Stan, Josh, Amber, Holly, Ella and Dan. The series of books and activities provide progression through three levels. Each story is provided on-screen, with animation and a printed book. The stories supplement existing reading schemes by reinforcing frequent words and developing independence in reading.

The stories are based around experiences enjoyed by all children, but with the added interest of a unique, clearly recognisable environment. Deliberately cross-cultural and totally inclusive, they are written using familiar vocabulary, with an emphasis on frequent words and simple sentence construction.

Along with the on-screen book, a number of activities are also provided which are based on specific literacy objectives. These activities are differentiated, enabling children of all abilities to use them. They offer practice and reinforcement suitable for both group and individual work.

At level one, each book familiarises the reader with the characters both in pictures and print. A repeated sentence structure and strong visual clues in pictures and animation support early readers. At level two there is a book dedicated to each of the Wobble children. Repetition in the text is also a feature of these stories. Dialogue is also introduced. By level three, each book has developed a strong but simple narrative.

The activities provided with Planet Wobble relate to picture, word and sentence level work. “Matching” encourages children to look for patterns, from simple picture and word matching to listen-and-find activities. “Sentences” helps reinforce the features of sentence construction. “Words” reinforces recognition of frequent words as well as spelling them. “Questions” encourages children to understand and respond to questions about the books. “Writing stories” uses prepared Clicker grids to enable children to compose their own stories based on the theme of the book. Lastly, “Make your own books” is a book template without text which allows the teacher andor pupils to write stories.

Being based on Clicker 4 may be seen by some as a handicap, but I consider it a software tool every school should have. With the on-screen book design, I would have liked to see every word highlighted as it is spoken by the computer. Similarly, I felt the animations were limited and not as good as those in Sherston’s Oxford Reading Tree talking books. However, this series is much more than just a series of talking books. Indeed there’s even a dedicated website - www.cricksoft.comclickerbooksplanetwobble - which is an important part of the series and is growing all the time. Children who visit the site regularly will be able to read about new books and engage in online activities. They can also email any of the six characters, who reply to every email. Overall, this is an excellent, supplementary literacy resource.

Chris Drage