Prepared as a guide for teachers, parents, and librarians, this handbook presents guidelines for developing a collection of movable action books (also called pop-ups, movables, surprise books, lift-the-flap books, or novelty books) appropriate for use with children in the home or school setting. Following a brief description of action books, their…

The 1200 books, published from 1985 through 1987, were selected to provide pleasurable reading for high school students. Annotated entries, listed by author, provide the title, publisher, year of publication, length, type: fiction or nonfiction, and are arranged alphabetically under 47 main categories. These include: (1) adventure and survival;…

Concerned with the need to stimulate reading pleasure for older adolescents, this document outlines a high school reading unit that capitalizes on the perennial popularity of series books such as Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift. Suggested activities include having students reflect on their personal reading and write a fictional sketch…

The reading interests of a group of older adults were examined. Subjects were 16 adults between the ages of 50 and 85 who read five stories from "Readers' Digest" short story collections and who responded to a questionnaire about their preferences for the stories, their reading habits and interests, and the appealing elements of the stories. The…

The six articles in this journal deal with reading children's literature. The topics discussed are: the necessary immorality of reading teachers, leisure reading at a junior high school, classroom use of "The Pigman," adolescent reading, teaching the novel, and the role of parents in preschool education. The issue also contains a list of…

This study examined the relationships between fourth graders' performance on two intelligence, eight achievement, three creative thinking, three attitude, and two locus of responsibility scales and their self-reported out of school preferences for activities involving (1) peers, (2) television, (3) radio, (4) adults or parents, (5) reading, and…

Magazines and comic strips are two readily available cultural artifacts that can be used by expository writing teachers. Magazines are a particularly rich source of referential material for the composition classroom, offering examples of various prose styles and formal structures. One possibility for using magazines in writing classes is a…

This study investigated the relative importance of the major factors associated with the habit of reading or nonreading. Some 2,731 seventh-grade students were the subjects of the study; from these, 487 were identified as either readers or nonreaders, and, from this group, 22 students were selected for additional in-depth case studies. From over…

This study was designed to consider whether, by introducing fourth grade children to books by two promotional techniques, teachers can influence: (1) the amount of personal reading done by children, (2) which books these children select for personal reading, and (3) the attitude of the children toward the books they select. In each of reading, and…

This paper argues that there has been an overemphasis among reading and English teachers on the role of diagnosis, prescription, and testing for mastery of isolated skills. The result has been a short-term profit of increased scores on posttests, but a long-term sacrifice of students who are eager to read. The author suggests that the best method…

This book is organized around the skills a reader needs to move from a beginning reader to one with the ability to evaluate and synthesize. Part I presents an overview of the book and discusses the factors that promote individualization of instruction, it also includes a model of the reading process. Part 2 discusses the four main components of a…

Data for this study were gathered as part of a national survey of reading activities of adults. The study was conducted by the Response Analysis Corporation of Princeton, N.J. A national probability sample of 5,067 adults, age 16 or older, were interviewed in their homes and asked about all the printed matter they had read or looked at the…

Uses a small-scale attitude survey to assess children's attitudes to the way reading is taught in England, and examines possible alternatives to existing practice. (RS)

Investigates the relationship of out-of-school activities to reading achievement. Finds a wide variation between children in amount of out-of-school reading. Concludes that reading books was the out-of-school activity that had the strongest association with reading proficiency, but that on most days most subjects did little or no book reading. (MM)

Suggests that the figure of the bear (and animals in general) in children's literature is a pleasing one to children, and helps them learn to love their instinctive, natural selves. (JC)