The details of a 6-year investigation entitled the Education Testing Service (ETS) Collaborative Research Project on Reading, which brought researchers and educators together in classroom studies of young children learning to read, are presented in this book. The first four chapters of the book describe the theoretical rationale, design, and procedures of the study, while the next four chapters present a distillation of the research findings in the form of a theory about the nature of beginning reading and about the knowledge children bring to bear in learning how to read. The remaining five chapters present background information and descriptions of case studies portraying the unique constellation of styles, interests, and reading accomplishments that marked the classroom lives of four children while they were learning to read. (HOD)