Series books offer advantages for newer readers that parents might overlook, says Professor Lucy Calkins of Columbia University Teachers College. One value of series books is that when children first read chapter books, a series provides them with a lot of support. The reader continues to meet the same characters, usually in the same setting and in stories that follow similar patterns. The characters, setting and genre seem like old friends, so the child can concentrate on the new elements, such as plot and vocabulary. Written by Louis Sachar, who won the 1999 Newbery Medal for Holes , the short books make readers laugh but also inspire sympathy as Marvin gets into one scrape after another at school and home.
Some children prefer fantasy to reality.
A wildly popular fantasy series by Dav Pilkey centers on two restless elementary-school boys and their superhero principal, Captain Underpants. The books keep readers laughing with cartoonlike illustrations and the kind of broad humor in the title of the latest one, Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants . Publishers Weekly , the publishing industry's trade magazine, gave its Cuffie Award for Funniest Book of the Year to the first book, The Adventures of Captain Underpants . Time Warp Trio series by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith in which three boys travel through time encountering dangers and trading wisecracks. The author-illustrator team, best known for The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales , set out to create a series that would appeal especially to boys who are reluctant readers, and it has succeeded.