ABSTRACT
Over the past decade or so children's literature has assumed a new status in the teaching of reading in the first years of school. Previously, though enthusiastic teachers read to children during story time, actual instruction in reading ‘skill’ was largely carried out through specially written materials, in the form of reading schemes and comprehension exercises. The result was that for very many children Janet and John, Dick and Jane were more familiar figures of fiction than Rosie, Alfie or Tom Long. There have, of course, always been teachers who understood that the texts through which children learned to read were important for the kinds of readers they became, but these exceptions were the more remarkable because the dominant practices were so strong.
