In this article, the author talks about "Developing Early Literacy," the report of the National Early Literacy Panel. The panel, which consisted of nine experts, was convened by the National Institute for Literacy to synthesize the research on the development of literacy from birth through age 5. Over the eight years of their work, only 190 studies met their rigid criteria for examining the effectiveness of instructional strategies, programs, or practices. Almost half of those studies (41 percent) focused on code-based interventions, which were designed to help young children understand the alphabetic principle, decoding (i.e., sounding out words), and encoding (i.e., learning which letters are used to write particular sounds and words). The author agrees that all these things are extremely important. But she worries that too many readers of "Developing Early Literacy" will not realize what a narrow view of literacy development it presents. She stresses her mother's advice on finding a life partner when reviewing a major meta-analysis on developing literacy. While her mom said to avoid the "flashy types" and pick someone with "staying power," the experts who wrote the report focused only on the most obvious components of developing early literacy. The author argues that the panel failed to consider the component with staying power: background knowledge. (Contains 11 endnotes.)