ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part aims to demonstrate that the best information texts are interesting, exciting, challenging and sometimes boundary-breaking. For some young readers they are the principle gateway to enjoyable and critical reading. Most publishers of reading programmes have non-fiction titles in print and electronic format. Note has been taken of the old criticisms of reading schemes – unvaried vocabulary, unwelcome stereotyping, unexciting text. One principal aim: an information text informs or instructs about a subject, an event or a set of ideas. Of course information texts can amuse and entertain, but their main, indeed their defining, purpose is to inform and to extend knowledge. New kinds of texts have come into being to meet the needs born of societal change and made possible by new technology, and they bring the need for new kinds of literacy.
