About Munchkin Reads

Munchkin Reads is a curriculum driven, researched-based reading company that uses great books & reading guides to enhance academic & emotional learning. Our Harvard-trained literacy specialist creates fun, interactive lessons that support tangible, important lessons

Our Academic Focus

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  • Text complexity. How challenging is this material? Difficulty is assessed based on language, number of new vocabulary words & sentence length.

  • Knowledge acquisition. What is this book teaching your child about the world?

  • Vocabulary development. What new words will this book teach your child? About 90% of the words in texts come from 4,000 word families (help, helped, helps, helper)

  • Reading stamina. How will this book prep you to read long texts, remember what you’ve read and apply it to another story?

  • Volume of reading.  The more kids read at home, the more they’ll read once they start school. Adding 7 minutes of reading per day as been found to make a difference in classrooms

Our Emotional Focus (SEL)

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  • Self-awareness: Ability to recognize ones emotions & their influence on behavior. What does this book teach your child about himself?

  • Self-management: Ability to regulate emotions, thoughts & behaviors. What lessons does this book teach about making good decisions?

  • Social awareness: Ability to take perspective or & empathize with others of diverse backgrounds & cultures. What does this book teach us about putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes?

  • Relationship skills. Ability to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, resist inappropriate social pressure, negotiate conflict & help others. What does this book teach us about being a good friend, brother, student, etc?

  • Responsible decision-making: Ability to make good choices based on the information you have. What does this book teach us about how to make decisions?

Our Literacy Specialist

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Rebekah Jacobs has spent the last 19 years in education, beginning her career as an English teacher in Southeast Los Angeles. After seeing so many struggling readers, she vowed to learn research-based practices to ensure all children can read smoothly, comprehend fully and write well.

Rebekah has extensive experience with teacher professional development and literacy coaching. She wrote literacy sessions for Teach For America's summer institute, designed an elementary curriculum for nursery and primary schools in Kenya and created a social studies curriculum for charter schools across the US.

Most recently in Washington, DC, Jacobs was responsible for ensuring high-quality literacy instruction was taking place in PreK-8th grade classrooms. In addition, she was a Guided Reading and Close Reading trainer for KIPP Literacy labs.

Rebekah holds a Reading Specialist degree/Masters of Education in Language and Literacy from Harvard University, a Masters of Arts in Education and Language Arts from Loyola Marymount and a BA from the University of Texas in Austin. Most importantly, she's a mom of three bookworms: 10-year-old Henry (fantasy, sports, & humor); 9-year-old Gracie (graphic novels); & 2-year-old Jack (trucks & animals). She also has been known to find good audiobooks for her husband's long commute (mystery & nonfiction).