This eclectic list offers some key readings in emergent literacy that will be of interest to those who care about young children and literature. The authors of these classic titles address emergent literacy from a variety of perspectives including those of teacher and librarian, researcher and practitioner. Possibilities for further reading may be found in the bibliography for this site.

Butler, Dorothy. Babies Need Books. New York, Atheneum, 1980.

Written for an audience of parents, this beautiful and lovingly written explication of the importance of books in the early years of a child's life is a classic in the library field. "From the moment a baby first opens his eyes, he is learning. Sight, sound, and sensation together spark off a learning process which will continue to the end of his life and determine in large measure the sort of person he will become" (p. 1).

"And now to nursery rhymes. Don't even consider facing parenthood without a really good collection" (p. 20).

Clay, Marie M. What Did I Write: Beginning Writing Behaviour. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

Clay is known for work on the emergent writing of young children. This fascinating book illustrates issues in the teaching and learning of writing by using examples of the work of four and five year olds. "The theme of this book is the child's gradual development of a perceptual awareness of those arbitrary customs used in written English. It does not provide a specification of how to teach printing. It tries to make apparent the diverse difficulties faced by individual children." (p. 2).

Carlson, Ann D. Early Childhood Literature Sharing Programs in Libraries. Hamden, CT: 1985.

Based on research for her doctoral dissertation, Carlson's book explicates the implications of her carefully researched schema of the developmental growth and abilities of very young children on library programming for children at different stages of development. In addition, her analyses of the results of a survey of 324 children's librarians across the country show that, ". . . librarians who offer early childhood literature sharing programs are indeed practicing in their programs what early childhood development information indicates they should be practicing" (p. 64). The chapter on the history of library services for young children is also a unique resource.

Durkin, Delores. Children Who Read Early. New York: Teacher's College Press, 1966.

"Delores Durkin's 1966 study of precocious readers challenged the then-prevalent view that children who read early would suffer problems in school. She found the opposite, that early readers maintained their achievement lead. This led to the eventual demise of reading readiness programs, highlighted the role of parents in literacy learning, and set the stage for later emergent views" ("The Studies that Mattered" Reading Today, July, 1998, p. 28)

Paley, Grace. Cushla and Her Books.

Schickedanz. Judith A. Much More than ABC's: The Early Stages of Reading and Writing. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1999.

A professor of education and specialist in early childhood development, Schickedanz, based this book on her earlier More than ABC's. "The goal of the book is not to encourage parents and preschool teachers to teach children to read and write conventionally before first grade...I have written this book to help adults give literacy learning a playful, interesting, useful, and joyous places in the lives of babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartners, at home, in childcare programs, and at school" (p.-9).

Teale, W. H. and Sulzby, Eds. Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1992 (?)

classic edited collection of essays was the first to bring together a body of work on EL. This collection is cited in almost every study of el of young children. Originally published in ?