"Reading maturity" is a construct that looks broadly at reading development encompassing not only basic reading skills but reading habits, attitudes, and dispositions. It has a rich history and this article calls for a need to make reading maturity a necessary part of the literacy curriculum. It offers a working description and reviews…

The 160 third, seventh, and eleventh-graders involved in this study agreed, almost unanimously, that reading was "important." Participants cited the empowering benefits of reading as they justified this opinion. However, with regards to the enjoyment of reading, fewer middle and high school participants reported "liking"…

Argues that, to transform students into lifelong readers, teachers must conceive a plan to motivate students to develop positive attitudes about reading. Cites self-efficacy as particularly pertinent to motivation. Reviews the research on self-efficacy to examine which instructional strategies are most effective in literacy education. (PA)

Suggests that teachers of reading would do well to look at the books in use in their classrooms and ask if they really do help present the acts of reading and writing as being varied, important, and enjoyable. (HOD)

Finds a relationship between parents' perceptions of literacy learning and the perceptions of literacy learning which their children were developing but, within this group, finds an extremely weak relationship between parents' perceptions of literacy learning and their children's emerging literacy knowledge. Finds that children were developing…

Documents the perceptions of literacy acquisition held by parents from three different cultural groups (Chinese Canadian, Euro-Canadian, and Indo-Canadian). Suggests that cultural membership is a crucial variable to examine, and that communicating dimensions of literacy programs to parents may be very difficult given the ways in which cultural…