A New Latin Primer is the first in a series of Latin readers for beginners. The primer, as well as the books that follow ( Cornelia , Carolus et Maria , and Acta Muciorum ) were ingeniously devised to teach students to read Latin not via drills and the rote memorization of grammar rules, but through a simple, charming story that slowly increases in complexity by the end of the book. A New Latin Primer contains 554 unique vocabulary words which are understandable in context and repeated in successive chapters. The narrative is divided into 40 short chapters, each of which corresponds to writing and dictation exercises in the second half of the book.