ABSTRACT
Multiple languages and literacies are at play within the context of young children's families and homes. At times, they are called family literacy practices, other times, home literacies. To show the power of family literacy practices to literacy learning, the chapter offers examples of how teachers access and pedagogically reposition home literacies as funds of knowledge. It examines this repositioning as necessary as funds of knowledge aim to "develop innovations in teaching that draw upon the knowledge and skills of local households"; that is, that draw on family literacies. Because some families' cultural practices are being imposed on other families and children in the name of family literacy practices and children's academic success, the chapter deals with an impoverished definition of what counts as literacy. Phonics and word recognition have become well-disseminated "basics" of early literacy without much regard for the multiple pathways to literacy learning and development in ethnocentric ways.
