Sunrise Readers – Level Four Available!

Our new Level Four Sunrise Readers are available!

Learners progress at their own pace. We are often asked, “What Level Sunrise Readers should my child be reading?” That will depend on many things.

Most learners with no reading challenges and a fair grasp of the English language will be able to read up to Sunrise Readers Book 6 – “Family and Friends” – by the end of their first year of formally learning to read. For many children, that is the end of Grade One. Of course, there are many children who need to go more slowly, and many others who may even reach Book 10 – “Out and About”.

The original, first edition Sunrise Readers Reading Scheme consisted of 20 Sunrise Readers and the Blue and Red Books. 26 in all. In the 1980s and 1990s in Zimbabwean schools, there were few other multicultural appropriate reading schemes available, and the Sunrise readers were the only reading books accessible. As a result, learners with no reading challenges would read systematically through Books 1 – 10 in Grade One and into Grade Two, and then read Books 11 – 20 in Grade Two and into Grade Three. After that, they would progress into the three Blue Books, followed by the three Red Books.

In 2016, Pearson Education Africa – the Publishers of the Sunrise Readers at that time, asked the original authors – Vivian Jenkins and Chrissie Lewis – to revise the Sunrise Readers. Technology and Context needed to be brought from the 1980s to the 2020s! And so revisions began. By 2023, Sunrise Readers Books 1 – 12 had been revised. These beautiful bright new books, still keeping everything that made them so successful in the teaching and learning of reading, are being thoroughly enjoyed in schools all over Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana.

Now, at the end of 2025, Sunrise Readers Level Four are about to go to print, and will be available from mid-November 2025.

Your children will be so excited to read these new edition Sunrise Readers! We’re proud of them, and we know they will delight the next generation and keep them reading!