ABSTRACT
In 1968, I had a conversation with Dick Venezky in which he pointed out the overwhelming preponderance of story text in basal readers. At the time I viewed the comment as a curiosity. A similar sentiment was repeated (Venezky, 1982) in print. However, it simply remained an interesting comment until sometime in 1994 when I taught a course called “Trends and Issues in Reading.” As part of that course students were required to read an article by Pappas (1993), which reported some of her research on information text. In that article, Pappas reported that there were conditions under which kindergarten students processed information text as easily as stories. Diane Lane, a teacher in a local school district, was a student in that course and became intrigued with including information text in reading instruction. She invited me into her classroom to do research shortly thereafter. We have been collaborators in using information text for reading instruction ever since.
