Spelfabet

Last chance to get Phonics With Feeling books

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The affordable, download-and-print Phonics With Feeling decodable books will sadly disappear from the Spelfabet shop on June 30th 2026.

Their talented author and illustrator, Gaia Dovey, has decided that the small amount of income they now generate for her is more trouble than it’s worth at tax time. Fair enough. There are a gazillion decodable books on the market these days, and extra funding has been provided to buy them. Maybe everyone now has what they need, at least for a while.

In case you want more decodables and have time/volunteers to print, fold and staple them, here are 10 reasons to get some Phonics With Feeling books now, before they disappear.

1. The 66 books (11 sets) all contain high repetitions of their target sound-spelling relationships. Plenty of ‘decodable’ books don’t contain many words (sometimes none!) with the sound-spelling relationships stated on their covers.

2. Their author and illustrator has a PhD in English Literature, so she worked hard to include coherent and cohesive narratives, entertaining plots, engaging characters and themes worth talking about (her grandchildren gave her frank and fearless feedback). The books include words which might be beyond children’s everyday vocabulary, encouraging them to try out new words and think about/discuss what they mean. There are also playful ‘sound effects’ and rhymes.

3. The series starts with a set of Initial Code Review books suitable for late Foundation and early Year 1. The rest of the books work through vowel sound-spelling relationships in small steps, ending up in Set 11 with some tricky consonant spellings. Vowel spellings are the hardest thing about English spelling, and some children need to practise them A LOT. These books are also useful for extension work for children who have read all your decodables for current phonics targets, but aren’t yet ready to move on to the next targets, or considerably harder books.

4. Each set of books comes with printable quizzes about their story. These can be used to check for comprehension and spark discussion about the characters, settings, events and ideas in the books. The quizzes are also available free on Wordwall, which is more fun for kids than a written quiz (but more screen time). You can set the quizzes as homework if you have a Wordwall subscription and students have internet access at home.

5. The Phonics With Feeling books contain more words than most decodable books, so they offer extra reading practice. They can be used for fluency activities (there’s even a play in set 3) for children who aren’t yet ready to transition to books containing harder spelling patterns.

6. They’re perfect for sound searches: guess how many words in the book will contain the target sound before you read (like guessing the number of jellybeans in the jar) then read the book and write out all the words with the target sound. Count them up. The winner is the person whose guess is closest to correct. I usually let kids change their guess halfway through the book, then moan about having done so, after they win by miles.

7. I often use these books for dictation activities, especially with kids who can read fairly well but struggle with handwriting, punctuation and spelling. There are no spelling trip wires in these books, so they’re great for transcription practice. I first ask them to read the book aloud and draw their attention to any potentially tricky spellings (asking ‘will you be able to spell that?’). I usually tell them where to put all punctuation except full stops and capital letters, at least at first.

8. Some of the books target frequent patterns that are missing or late in other phonics sequences e.g. Extended Code Set 1 targets c/cent and ce/voice, g/gem and ge/large, le/little, o/love and a/wall. These are all very common, in fact o/love is more common than u/up among the words near the top of high-frequency word lists. The single-letter a/apron spelling is by far the most common spelling of the sound /ae/, and the VCe spelling as in a/ate is next, but some teaching sequences start with far-less-common ay/day and ai/rain. These books can help you adjust for this, and fill gaps.

9. To print a class set of 30 copies, get the Teacher/Clinician files (20c per print, plus printing, folding and stapling). If you only need 5 copies of each book, get the Parent/Aide files (40c per print, plus printing, folding, stapling). Very affordable.

10. (Misc) No need for a colour printer, they print in black and white. If a young child will be keeping one of the books, they can colour it in. Some kids love that. If a Phonics With Feeling book gets lost or wrecked, print a replacement. All 11 sets fit into a colourful, foldable book box available from major stationers, like the one pictured at left. You can download more information about the Phonics With Feeling books, including printing and assembly instructions, here.

To reward you for reading right to the end, and make the Phonics With Feeling books even more affordable, please use the Coupon Code “EOFY 2026” at the Spelfabet shop checkout for 20% off these and any other items before June 30.