INTRODUCTION

This is a book which offers an important challenge to all teachers in primary and secondary schools. It focuses on critical experiences, particularly at times of transition between phases of schooling, when the demands made on children’s literacy change fundamentally, and during which children establish lifetime patterns of reading or non-reading. It is a challenge which concerns the meaning and centrality of literacy within the curriculum, and the role of the school in creating a community which promotes literacy as a vital element of all learning.