This study was designed to determine whether the content of selected beginning reading textbooks is comparable in syntactic complexity to the oral language of normal first-grade children and whether there was a predictable progression of syntactic complexity within the textbooks examined. The ten samples were taken from the primary levles of the MacMillan Reading Series, designed for average readers, and eight samples from comparable levels of The Open Highways Series (Scott, Foresman and Co.), designed for "slow starters." Each of the 18 samples consisted of 50 consective sentences. The textbook samples were scored according to Developmental Sentence Scoring procedure. Examination revealed an irregular and unpredictable progression of difficulty in both series. It was concluded that the syntactic programing in the textbooks examined is not consistent with the order of syntax acquisition in the oral language of first grade children, although sample mean scores for both series were comparable to, or lower than, oral language mean scores for six-year-olds in the normative populations. (Author/LL)