Once upon a time, there lived a princess named Peach. All Princess Peach wanted to do all day long was play video games.

The king and queen always told Princess Peach to do her schoolwork, but she would toss her books aside and run straight to her video games every day.

Princess Peach did not know how to read and the king and queen were very worried. "Please," they begged. "Do your schoolwork so that you can become a great leader."

"Ha!" laughed Princess Peach. "I don't need to learn to read! I'm not going to become a leader, anyway. I'm playing video games forever!" The king and queen gave up.

One day, Princess Peach came across a new video game. This video game had a lot of weird-looking squiggles. Princess Peach could not understand!

    Princess Peach started to cry. Just then, a fairy appeared. "You must learn to read, Princess Peach!" the fairy told her. "But I don't know how!" cried the princess. "I don't even know what these funny lines mean!"

    "Then we will need to start working on your accuracy in reading, Princess Peach," said the fairy. "Accuracy?" asked the princess. "Yes," said the fairy. "Those funny lines are called 'letters' and they each make a different sound. You need to learn the sounds that letters make correctly so that you can read words with accuracy!"

    The fairy taught Princess Peach all of the sounds that the squiggles called letters made and she practiced decoding them, or correctly identifying the sounds, in a book the fairy gave her. At first, Princess Peach had a very difficult time remembering the right sounds, but soon she found herself getting them all correct.

   "I read that!" Princess Peach yelled with glee. "You did!" the fairy yelled back. "Keep up the practice! Repeated reading of a familiar story will help you remember the right sounds!"

   "Can I keep reading the book you gave me?"

    "Of course," said the fairy. "If you like it, you may keep it to help you practice your reading."

   The princess was delighted and thanked the fairy. She ran to the king and queen to show them her new talent.

    "Mother! Father!" Princess Peach called out. "I have learned how to read! Listen to this story the fairy gave me!"

   Princess Peach then read a few sentences out of the book to the king and queen.

   "That is lovely, dear," said the king and queen. "But you are reading very slowly and you do not sound stiff. Keep up the good work and you should get better soon!"

   Princess Peach did notice her speech when she read was slow and stilted. She returned to the fairy the next day.

"Oh, fairy!" cried Princess Peach. "I have still not learned to read very well! Mother and Father said that my reading is slow and I sound wrong. Please help me!"

    "Well, we can do that!" said the fairy. "All we have to do is improve your prosody."

   "What?" asked the princess.

"Your prosody," repeated the fairy. "How you sound when you read. Do you notice how I am talking right now? Does my speech sound natural to you?"

   "Yes!" said the princess. "Mother and Father said I sound slow and stilted."

   "That makes sense," said the fairy. "You are a new reader."