The Reading Hut®
"On a mission to inspire every child to read, learn, and find joy in words. We publish One, Two, Three and Away! series. Reading the Village with Three Corners early and for pleasure!"
The Reading Hut Book Store
When I first graduated and set out to inspire children to not just learn to read but to be 'readies'—devouring books like chocolate—I was told by the head teacher not to use a 'scheme' and simply immerse children in rich literature. I wasn't prepared to leave such an important skill to chance, so I ignored her wishes. As teachers, we often have to do this—they are in our care, and we care! Almost all my students were readers by the time they moved up to Year 1, in stark contrast to the children in the other infants' class.
When I started to develop my own 'visual and linguistic' phonics approach in Australia, I knew when children were ready for more than just decodable books aligned with phonics. However, I couldn't find a series that would inspire children to engage in stories. Having had such success with "The Village with Three Corners," I set out on a mission to make The Reading Hut Ltd the proud publishers of this series, bringing it back into the hands of budding readers, and make this series of levelled readers decodable. My persistence paid off. Please do reach out if you can help me get these books into libraries for free access to all children. It costs a lot to print, but libraries can stock them!
Please also join the Upstream Team and our movement called Phonics Reform England
Emma Hartnell-Baker Support@TheReadingHut.com
1,2,3 and Away! Book Shop
The Reading Hut Ltd is now publishing of the Village With Three Corners series by Sheila McCullagh. Ask your local library to stock them!
Your child will LOVE learning to read with Tthe Village With Three Corners. No guessing, or memorising words as we use The Code Overlay
MyWordz® technology shows which letters are graphemes and their sound value in every word, so no child has to memorise or guess.
We use the Village with Three Corners books to focus on reading for pleasure in the early years. Children love the characters and stories! Adults who learned to read with them in school write to us daily to share fond memories. We have added the Griffin Pirate Stores and Tim and Tobias books here on The Reading Hut website so that you can read them as flip books.
At The Reading Hut Ltd we design reading and spelling solutions that help every child see the Code, map words and become confident readers who can spell with ease as words are stored in their brain word bank, also known as the orthographic lexicon.
We have launched Phonics Reform England to support schools in strengthening their current practice. It is not about replacing phonics, but about improving how it works in practice so that more children succeed.
Phonics Reform England focuses on preventing the dyslexia paradox, where children can fall behind because early signs are missed and support is delayed during the critical window for establishing efficient reading pathways, from birth to around seven years of age. Over time, this gap widens, and motivation to read often declines, even though reading itself is the most powerful way to become a better reader.
The Upstream Team are Level 7 specialists in Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD), Special Educational Needs (SEN), and Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN)
Join us to build on the existing foundation of phonics, to make word mapping work for every child and prevent the dyslexia paradox.
The Reading Hut is bringing The Story People back to UK nurseries and schools through The Speech Sound Play Plan!
My mother was the infants teacher every child wanted: genuinely interested in them as individuals, caring, and always going the extra mile to meet their learning needs. She played the piano, taught everyone the recorder, and there was daily singing and rhyming. She began every Monday morning with their weekend news, read a story at the end of each day, listened to every child read almost daily, and encouraged plenty of free play.
There was always a dress-up area and an ever-changing home corner—sometimes a shop, café, or post office. She had a craft and box-work space set up where children could grab an apron and a pot of glue or paint and create freely, without direction. She used The Village With Three Corners to teach across the curriculum. Within the series, children would dress up and act out the stories, count change and solve real-life maths problems in the village shop, write letters to the characters and post them in the class post box, draw maps of the Village Square, and much more.
Every child left her Reception class as a reader. Every single one.
She passed away last year, and I am so glad I tracked down and obtained the print rights to the series so I could honour her and the way we used to be able to teach four- to six-year-olds, with talking, play, and stories at the heart of everything we did. I became an early years teacher because of her. And I am excited to bring back The Story People, to be used within the Speech Sound Pics Approach.
Emma Hartnell-Baker
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The Early Dyslexia Screening Centre uses Monster Mapped® books to give at risk learners the complete information about how letters and sounds connect. These editions make the full code visible at the moment of reading, providing the clarity and orthographic knowledge that at least 1 in 4 children do not receive through synthetic phonics programmes. Ask about the Speedie Readies Intervention: Preventing the Dyslexia Paradox
When children see the code in the orthographcally mapped Village With Three Corners pre-readers they can focus on reading for pleasure as they aren't having to try to decode every word, or memorise or guess words. Get started at SpeedieReadies.com
Libraries can order the Village with Three Corners books through Askews, Gardners and other major suppliers. A downloadable ISBN list is available to help with orders.
Includes info for Australian customers
Dyslexic children learn to connect speech and print more easily when the first 36 Village With Three Corners books are orthographically mapped.
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Emma Hartnell-Baker aka The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer® is an SEN specialist who champions the prevention of language and literacy difficulties and is a passionate advocate for children with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) . At the World Literacy Summit, she shared practical examples of how to screen toddlers for early signs of dyslexia risk.
Every speech sound of English has a Phonemie®, so children “follow the monster sounds to say the word” and then notice the graphemes. SALTs will see the link between Phonemies (Speech Sound Monsters) and the IPA.
Emma Hartnell-Baker, The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®, leads this work. Her doctoral research into orthographic interference and teacher word mapping informs all Reading Hut resources, ensuring inclusive literacy support and Word Mapping Mastery® for all.