Well-chosen and wisely shared literature facilitates transitions and builds bridges in the lives of young children. Literature links are discussed and books are reviewed for infant, toddler, preschool, and primary age children and transitional readers.

The development of phonological awareness (PA) before school age was modeled in association with the development of vocabulary and letter knowledge, home literacy environment (HLE), children's reading interest, and beginning reading skill in children with and without familial risk of dyslexia. A total of 186 children were followed from birth to…

Acquisition of orthographic knowledge and phonemic sensitivity are processes that are central to early reading development in several languages. The language-specific characteristics of the alphasyllabaries ( Bright, 1996), however, challenge the constructs of orthographic knowledge and phonemic sensitivity as discussed in the context of…

A randomized experimental design with three levels of intervention was used to compare the effects of beginning reading interventions on early phonemic, decoding, and spelling outcomes of 96 kindergartners identified as at risk for reading difficulty. The three instructional interventions varied systematically along two dimensions--time and design…

New spellers, adults just beginning to learn to read and write, face daunting problems with English vocabulary. Teachers use varying approaches to help these students, including published lists of Words Most Frequently Used. This paper provides an inventory of words used in letters to syndicated columnist "Dear Abby" as published in a…

Discusses the positive effects that can be gained from using the initial teaching alphabet in beginning reading instruction. (RB)

Discusses the importance of learning to transform the visual representation of language into meaning during beginning reading. (RB)

Argues that reading research studies should be more widely disseminated so that teachers may apply the latest information in teaching reading. (RB)

Concludes that word blending is a controversial issue and questions its usefulness. (RB)

Reviews the literature in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) on models describing the reading process. (RB)

Concludes that the diacritic e generalizations formulated on graphics research have value for use in decoding programs as early as the first reader of typical basal series. (RB)

Discusses the results of research on the effect of readiness training for preschool youngsters. (RB)

Research supports Samuels' focal attention hypothesis for acquiring reading responses to novel words presented in isolation. (RB)

Describes a beginning reading program based on the child's language and experience. (RB)