In a quasi-experimental study, kindergarten teachers taught children mnemonic stories to orient the confusable letters "b" and "d." In the first week's stories, intervention teachers introduced the left-to-right sequence of features for these letters with "the bat hits the ball" and "a dime rolls up to a domino." The second week's stories dramatized how to print these letters efficiently. Comparison teachers taught their normal literacy curriculum. Intervention students significantly outperformed students in the comparison group in letter naming and letter printing. They gained accuracy in letter recognition that transferred to selecting the correct word from similar "b" and "d" words and in reading simple words with "b" and "d." These findings support a new path to establish reliable recognition of letters that vary only in orientation.