This article disrupts dominant discourses around boys and reading that often homogenise young males as reluctant, disengaged and, at times, adversarial readers. Rather than essentialising boys, we argue there is a need for a more sophisticated knowledge base about the influences, constraints and diverse experiences of boys as readers in society…

The Read to be Ready campaign emerged from the startling reality of Tennessee's reading achievement data. Only one-third of Tennessee fourth graders scored proficient in the last administration of National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in 2015. Equally concerning, students who fell behind in the early years almost never caught up in…

Literature holds the potential to significantly influence the lives of readers, but what is the nature of this influence for very young readers? This study investigated the question: What are the relationships between beginning readers and their personal literature? A first grade class of 18 students individually assembled a collection of personal…