Current conversations about children's literacy have focused on the need for more phonics and decoding instruction and have sidelined the importance of children's language development, argues George Hruby. Language development involves more than the ability to decode written language. The ability to understand the meaning of those words is also…

Basic research into the mechanisms and functions of the brain carried out in the past 25 years has provided evidence that humans do, indeed, experience two ways of knowing. More recent research has explored the nature of the apparent perceptual bias--or way of knowing--of each brain hemisphere, and this information, which has changed thinking…

While not all gifted children love reading and writing and they do not all have access to books or grow up in literary families the great majority of these children crave the rich and imaginative world that literacy has to offer. Differences in culture, age, and geography influence this love of storytellers, poets, songwriters, and novelists, but…