I believe their literature and student activity books have little redeeming literary value, plus they are dangerous in their heavy emphasis on violence, the occult, witchcraft, and just plain ugliness. There are others which do have acceptable, if not perfect, literature which brings us to the question of the method of instruction and time allotments for teaching language arts skills. Using worksheets with whole language literature will accomplish the same. It is too little, too late, too inefficient, discriminates against the non-visual learner, and it takes what little precious time teachers have for teaching or children for learning. Phonics by definition is first auditory as is training in phonemic awareness.
Sounds go with symbols or the letters which stand for the sounds on paper.
Phonics presented on worksheets is a visual drill usually employing both key words and pictures. It represents implicit phonics, not explicit phonics as the compiled research and California law now demand. What was linguistically correct for spelling and pronunciation 70 and 80 years ago is still linguistically correct for spelling in spite of our Americanized speech patterns now legitimitized by nearly all dictionaries, i.e., the schwa was put into American dictionaries, generally, in the 1960's. The problem is that doesn't help children learn how to spell the words as they, at one time, were also pronounced. The questions, after some 60 years of heated, though undefined debate, are anything but resolved.