This book is an essential guide for those many individuals who serve as children’s first teachers and who understand, as we do, that interactive book reading is an important context for helping children learn and develop.

For more than 10 years, our research team has examined ways to facilitate emergent literacy development in young children in ways that explicitly foster children’s engagement with print. This book was written to provide the community with materials generated through several federally funded studies that investigate ways to increase the emergent literacy skills.

SPARK was a family-focused kindergarten-readiness program that worked collaboratively with families, schools, and the community. Each month, children received a new book, a lesson activity, and educational supplies. Children also participated in home- or group-based learning opportunities—all with the goal of increasing the child’s success in school and life.

Funded by the Kellogg Foundation, The SOLYLUNA Book Reading Club promotes families’ access to books for young children in an area of high illiteracy in Mexico. Workshops and materials are currently being developed and shared across Mayan villages in Yucatan State in a collaboration between the Crane Center and Solyluna School in Merida, Mexico.

Project Kindergarten Readiness partners with the Ohio Education Research Center, Ohio Department of Education, Learn4Life, Learning Circle, and University of Cincinnati to address how kindergarten readiness does in predicting children’s reading skills in third grade.

Directors of childcare centers engage in a wide range of important tasks to make sure their centers run smoothly and ensure their children are receiving quality care. This study, developed in partnership with center directors, seeks to shed light on this complexity so that research, policy, and practice can better support these early childhood professionals.

PROJECT SPOTLIGHT: Take a look at one of our ongoing projects which is looking deeply into a child’s social and learning experiences with peers from preschool through third grade.

The APPLE evaluation looks at the extent to which professional development for preschool teachers impacted children’s language and literacy outcomes.