Richard Allington reviews the nature of the reading achievement gap between students from low-income and high-income families, concluding that the limited access to children's books experienced by children from low-income families lies at the base of the problem. The fact that children from low-income families lose reading achievement every summer…

Reading for Pleasure (RfP) acknowledges the importance of reader engagement and the role of the teacher as a reader of children's literature. The foundational work of the Teachers as Readers (TARs) programme successfully illustrated the impact of RfP activities on student learning. Previous studies of teachers' reader identities have shown a…

This article explores the relationship between enchantment and understanding in children's literature, where literary enchantment is not only an experience in which words entrance and mesmerize, eradicating the boundaries of ordinary perception, but also one that advances the reader's cognition. Focusing on Philip Pullman's "His Dark…

Fiction, more than expository text, nurtures intimate connections between text and the reader's life experiences. This dimension of reader response is underexplored in relation to children. Adapting methods from Empirical Literary Studies to educational research objectives, the authors employed the concept of 'remindings', i.e. reminiscing…

As the pedagogy of teachers depends partly on their earlier life experiences, investigating the prior reading practices of student teachers is crucial. This study investigated Finnish and English student teachers' (N = 353) own reading, the importance of their own reading to their reading pedagogy, and the relationship of these to teachers'…

Today's teachers are required to spend most of their English/Language Arts time in teacher-directed instruction with required text, which is primarily informational. Little, if any, time is allocated to self-selected independent reading (Garan & DeVoogd, 2008). In addition, some teachers do not understand the importance of independent reading…

This paper offers a new characterisation of young children's (2-8 years) reading for pleasure (RfP) with digital books. This characterisation is rooted in a re-contextualisation of Anna Craft's conceptualisation of twenty-first century childhoods in "Creativity and education futures" (Stoke on Trent, Trentham, 2011) and a review of the…

This article critically reviews the personalization logic embedded in reading recommendation systems developed for 2- to 11-year-old children and its (dis)alignment with Papert's constructionist and socio-constructionist theories of learning. It is argued that the current design fails to incorporate the computer culture that Papert envisioned for…

Think about your favorite children's book. What impact did it have on you? Besides the immediate enjoyment of the book, did it have any long-term impact?

While the critical importance of summer reading loss is receiving more attention than in the past, not all summer reading programs are alike. Featuring three new chapters and extensive updating, the second edition of this groundbreaking book describes current research that confirms the importance of key elements in the authors' summer reading…

Regular recreational reading offers benefits across a range of literacy outcomes, as well as supporting learning in other subject areas, offering cognitive benefits, and potentially fostering empathy. Therefore, increasing frequency of engagement in recreational reading can play an important role in addressing inequity in literacy outcomes once…

Aaron (2005) described the "family as the nation's smallest school" and "the home as the first school." Furthermore, studies document that 90% of the differences in academic achievement can be explained by five factors: (a) two-parent households; (b) school absenteeism; (c) amount read for homework; (d) quality and quantity of…

This paper discusses the pedagogical practice of developing reading for pleasure in pre- schools and primary phase settings through the lens of one key dimension of twenty-first-century reading: personalisation. It draws on a series of studies and examples to identify, address and problematise human- and digitally mediated personalised reading for…

In early 2017, Scholastic, in conjunction with YouGov, conducted a survey to explore the attitudes and behaviours of English- and French-speaking Canadian children and families around reading books for fun. The key findings of this research, based on a nationally representative sample of 1,939 parents and children, including 371 parents of…

Silent reading and book discussion about books read for pleasure can increase reading frequency and support the strengthening of student engagement in the beneficial practice of recreational reading. However, little is known about children's attitudes toward and experiences of these pedagogical activities. Qualitative findings from 47 children…