Opal provides 3rd grade students literature and language arts education that is welcoming, often fun, sometimes intriguing, and academically excellent. Opal also gives students the skills to make a smooth progression to our 4th grade book, Ruby .

Opal integrates language arts and literature with Lessons in Literature that precede each prose selection and teach a progression of language arts skills that build, one on the other. These lessons are specifically geared towards the 3rd grader. Opal includes works by Myron Uhlberg, Ann Cameron, Berniece Freschet, and Russell E. Erickson. The book is replete with short stories, a complete chapter book, drama, poetry, and nonfiction. Opal has a wonderful selection of poetry-more than 15 poems follow prose selections with which they are thematically linked. These are just for the pleasure of reading. Opal poets include Emily Dickinson, Jack Prelutsky, and Langston Huges.

Finally, Opal presents a unique Mosdos Press feature: Jill's Journal, a first-person narrative presumably written at the time of the prose selection. Third graders will enter the setting of the literary work, as if they were present in that time and place.