The EARLYREAD series contains both original stories and traditional favourites, as well as some cultural readers, graded over five levels. Features of all readers are: • beautiful illustrations, which not only encourage reading but actively help children to understand the story • picture dictionaries, for active vocabulary work • fun activities and games, often for more than one participant, which practise vocabulary and structures in the story. • a recording of the whole text, either on an accompanying CD or downloadable at no charge from the Black Cat website. All the readers can be easily dramatised. The most recent titles are accompanied by playscripts which can also be downloaded free from the Black Cat website. Earlyread Grading Earlyreads are graded according to the suitability of their subject matter to age group, as well as by structural and lexical criteria (a level 1 reader has no more than 100 headwords, while at level 2 the maximum is 150 headwords). Level 5 represents a good elementary ability (full competence at level A1 of the Common European Framework). For a complete discussion of the grading criteria used, see The Black Cat Guide to Graded Readers.