This article is excerpted from "Giving Our Children a Fighting Chance: Poverty, Literacy, and the Development of Information Capital" by Susan B. Neuman and Donna C. Celano. Based on 21 studies conducted over 10 years in two neighborhoods, it offers a new lens on the achievement gap--and the need for both school and community solutions. The…

Roser discusses how both teachers and librarians, whom she calls the preservers of children's reading, should cling tightly to three essential practices to ensure that our children read more, read better, and read more widely. She argues we should: a) keep the classroom library viable; b) preserve, protect, and defend time for self-selected…

This article profiles Nate Greenberg, a superintendent of the Londonderry (NH) School District who viewed action research as a means for supporting libraries, which he sees as central to education. During the past six years, Londonderry's cascade of action-research projects (led by librarians) has tackled challenges such as how to get high school…

There is great interest in the effect of school resources on academic achievement, but it is seldom that an opportunity arises in which this relationship may be examined in an international milieu. This paper presents the types of resources available in the 27 countries participating in the International Association for the Evaluation of…

Papers on linguistic minorities and library use include: (1) "Why Consider the Library and Books?" (Stephen Krashen); (2) "Supporting Spanish Language Literacy: Latino Children and School and Community Libraries" (Sandra Pucci); (3) "'I Did Not Know You Could Get Such Things There!': Secondary ESL Students' Understanding, Use and Beliefs…