In this article, the author describes her new approach to collection development. To fulfill her dream of each kid walking out of the library with the book they asked for, she enlisted the help of her students. Once they realized that their suggestions were taken seriously, the more they were willing to take the time to tell her about the great…

Every adult who reads to a child has seen what happens when a book speaks. For a time, the book becomes the child's beloved friend. It is asked for repeatedly and learned by heart. But books do more than speak to a child. Children use books to speak to adults. If one wants to understand a child's deepest emotions, take a look at the books they…

In recent decades, researchers have indicated that U.S. schools have underexposed elementary grade students to informational text. The increased exposure to this genre should be a top instructional priority. In the present study, we explored 46 third-grade students' attitudes toward and perceptions of informational text. Using three data sources…

When working as a teacher of deaf students, Melissa Herzig's school was a magnet high school just five minutes from the border of Mexico, where 95 percent of the students were Latinos. The deaf students' experiences with languages may involve using American Sign Language (ASL), a sign language they may have learned in their home country, English,…

Little is known about reading ability among doctoral students. Thus, we used a fully mixed concurrent equal status design (Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2009) to examine 205 doctoral students in the College of Education and their reasons for reading research articles. A thematic analysis revealed 5 themes (subsumed by 2 meta-themes) explaining reasons…

This study employed a triangulated mixed method to investigate reading motivation of Chinese middle school students in Taiwan. A total of 247 seventh grade students (122 boys and 125 girls) participated voluntarily by completing the Chinese Motivation for Research Questionnaire (CMRQ). Sixteen of the 247 students were purposely selected to…

There's no doubt about it--paranormal fiction is hot right now. The author's shelves are full of vampires and werewolves, faeries and zombies. As a fan of all things supernatural, she is thrilled about this explosion of the immortal, the unknown, and the mythological. And yet, it feels like people missing the eternal constant in this renaissance:…

Recent research in reading comprehension in Western settings has focused on collecting evidence from reading tests that would measure relevant ESL reading constructs to inform reading instruction and assessment. Similar studies in non-Western contexts, however, remain under-reported. This study involved 958 senior secondary Hong Kong (Chinese)…

This study examined the reading interest and emergent literacy skills of 31 children with Down syndrome (DS) ages 7 to 13. Parents completed questionnaires on their children's interest in reading, home literacy environments, and parental beliefs about reading. Children were then assessed on their cognitive and emergent literacy skills.…

There is an increasing interest in the way academic writers establish the presence of their readers over the past few years. Establishing the presence of readers or what Kroll (1984, p.181) calls imagining "a second voice" is accomplished when a writer refers "explicitly" to their readers using explicit linguistic resources…

Recent research, treating interest as an emotion, indicates the cognitive appraisals of novelty-complexity and coping potential predict interest. This appraisal-based model of interest has not yet been applied to educational research. The present study evaluated the significance of the model regarding the activity of reading expository,…

Boys need books with which they can connect, books that reach out to them with characters that reflect themselves, books that feature people who speak and look and act like the people in their lives. Among the functions of literature in children's lives, two are particularly relevant: facilitating literacy skills and providing role models. The…

This study focused on an intelligent robot which was viewed as a language teaching/learning tool to improve children's reading ability, reading interest, and learning behavior. The iRobiQ, with its multimedia contents, was employed to encourage children to read, speak, and answer questions. Fifty-seven pre-kindergarteners participated in this…

This article describes our collaborative inquiry, three teacher educators/researchers of literacy from different institutions who shared a concern about how few teacher candidates in our programs neither viewed themselves as readers nor possessed a love of reading, qualities we view as key to supporting all children as lifelong readers, writers,…

The development of interest in reading and its relationship to reading ability was examined longitudinally in 117 children in Grades 1-3. Interest in reading was measured by eight items from the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey. Less able readers had lower interest in reading, but their development was parallel to that of more able readers.…