Children's books support children's development, but many factors influence interest in engaging with books, including book physical features. Additionally, the lack of diverse children's books makes it difficult to determine whether racial characters influence children's book preferences. This study utilized a forced-choice selection task to…

The single-site case study described herein is part of a two-year professional development (PD) initiative aimed at helping teachers from an urban elementary (K-8) school learn how to implement explicit, transactional comprehension strategy instruction across grades using culturally relevant books. This paper describes the urban elementary…

In order to identify materials that would encourage urban eighth graders to read, the authors asked students about the importance they placed on reading, about their own reading abilities, and the role of race and genre in their book choice. On the basis of subscale scores from the "Adolescent Motivation to Read Profile Reading Survey"…

The Reading, Engaging, and Learning project (REAL) investigated whether a classroom intervention that enhanced young children's experience with informational books would increase reading achievement and engagement. Participants attended schools serving low income neighborhoods with 86% African American enrollment. The longitudinal study spanned…