Studies investigating the impact of parent involvement programs on children's reading ability and children's self concept usually fail to use rigorous research methods. This study utilizes a pre-test/post-test experimental design to investigate the effects of a 12 week parent and child reading intervention on the reading ability and self perceptions of reading ability in second and third grade students. Twenty parents, randomly assigned to the experimental group, participated in the weekly program sessions. The sessions emphasized simple techniques that parents could use at home to help their child in reading, such as relaxed reading, paired reading, and praise and encouragement. The "Basic Reading Inventory" and "The Self Concept as Reader" subscale of the "Motivation to Read" scale were administered to the children before and after the intervention. Statistical analyses revealed significantly greater improvements in reading as measured by the number of errors made on graded passages for the experimental group. No significantly greater improvements were made by the experimental group in terms of the number of errors made on graded word lists or graded comprehension questions, or in self perceptions of reading ability. Findings support the notion of parental involvement in reading to improve reading ability. Contains 59 references. (RJM)