About Us

The three founders of Phonic Books Ltd have a passion for teaching children to read. They are all experienced Special Needs teachers who worked together at the Bloomfield Learning Centre.

The centre, a charity located on the campus of Guys Hospital, London, assesses children and helps struggling readers through one-to-one tuition using synthetic phonics. The Centre also trains teachers and teaching assistants in how to teach reading using phonics.

When in 2006 the UK government adopted Synthetic Phonics as the preferred route to reading, the three partners knew there was a lack of structured reading books and teaching resources. They decided to write, illustrate and publish their own and created the Dandelion Readers series, initially distributing "Dandelions" from a small flat in Southwark. Since then, there has been a growing demand from local authorities, schools, teachers and parents. More and more "Dandelions" are being used in mainstream classrooms as well as a special needs resource for children who need extra support.

Following demand from their customers, the range has extended from the initial 10 titles to 160 today and will reach 190 before the end of the year. The range of books caters for pupils in Foundation Stage to reluctant readers in Years 7 and 8 in secondary school.

Distribution is now contracted out to a professional warehouse. The books are used in about 3500 UK schools and are exported to 25 countries. PB remains a small business which is determined to help in promoting literacy and estimates well over one hundred thousand children have already used the books.

Wendy, Tami and Clair still teach on a part-time basis and thank their own children, grandchildren and many others, especially pupils at the Bloomfield, for enthusiastically trialling the books. They also run workshops at the Bloomfield Learning Centre on Synthetic Phonics.

Please feel free to blog any ideas or suggestions for the future.

Wendy Tweedie

Wendy is mother of four, grandmother of eight and teacher to many hundreds of nursery and primary pupils of all abilities over the years. She graduated from the Open University and completed her PGCE at Surrey University (Roehampton) before qualifying as a SPld teacher and later as a Sounds-Write trainer. She also has secondary experience, running a Dyslexia unit in a state comprehensive in Norfolk. Latterly she was Head Teacher at the Bloomfield where she worked for seven years until retirement, assessing and coaching children between the ages of 6 and 15. She was frustrated that many reading schemes still rely on the "look and say" method when it was clear to her that guessing at reading is not the way forward for many children. This belief led to the founding of Phonic Books Ltd.

Tami Reis Frankfort

Tami studied History and Art History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Later she trained as a mature student at Goldsmith College (PGCE). She started out teaching in an inner city primary school in London. When her two children were born she continued to work with children from ethnic minorities. Her interest in special needs drew her towards a Diploma in Specific Learning Difficulties. Since then she has taught special needs in an inner city secondary school and is now at the Bloomfield Learning Centre in London. She is convinced that phonics is the way forward in teaching children to read. She has trained in both Phono-Graphix® and Sounds~Write® phonics programmes and is a Sounds- Write trainer. She feels passionately about helping children become readers. She believes that children need to read books that reinforce the synthetic phonics they have been taught. Dandelion Readers were created to meet that need.

Clair Baker

After completing a psychology degree and PGCE course Clair taught in a mainstream inner city school as a Reception teacher, Special Needs Coordinator and EMTAG support teacher for 10 years. Since having her own children, she has taught art in a school for visually impaired pupils from three to sixteen and currently works as a dyslexia assessor and teacher at the Bloomfield Learning Centre. Clair has always had a deep fascination with the power of visual imagery and has become increasingly excited by children's picture books since reading with her own children. It was this belief in the communication potential inherent in art and the ability of pictures to captivate and motivate the reader that inspired her illustrations for Dandelion Readers. She believes profoundly that children who have failed to learn to read need to be taught using stimulating and exciting material to start them on the journey as readers and was therefore keen to develop a unique illustration style for the Dandelion Readers that the children would not previously have encountered in their reading books.