An organizational framework consisting of the following four components is useful in exploring questions about improving textbooks: learner characteristics, learning activities, the critical task (for measuring student performance), and the nature of the materials. In considering learning characteristics and the materials, it is important to remember the crucial transition for children from basal reader prose to the prose in content area textbooks. In a study focusing on children's interest in social studies textbooks, it was shown that children find these texts uninteresting and difficult. This may be because their textbooks do not foster the learning skills necessary for understanding and remembering information. Some fundamental changes thus need to take place concerning what content area textbooks should be. Rhetorical textbooks that use metadiscourse to convey both content information and the author's attitudes toward it may advance the goals of learning from written texts and producing texts. Striking text differences between conventional and unconventional textbooks emphasize the need for an indepth study in order to improve the quality of all textbooks for children, not just those in social studies. (DF)