So Much More than the ABCs

The newest edition of this bestselling book will help early childhood professionals and families support young children in acquiring the understandings, knowledge, and skills needed for later success in learning to read and write. This revision updates information, cites new research, and includes new figures. The foundation for success in learning to read and write begins in infancy. As early childhood professionals, we have both the opportunity and the privilege to shape the progress young children make in acquiring the literacy skills, oral language skills, and background knowledge vital to their later success in learning to read and write. By engaging infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in experiences that foster oral language and content knowledge, literacy skills, and cognitive ability, we build a foundation for children's later academic success. Promoting children's desire to read and write is as important as helping children develop the necessary understandings and skills essential for learning how to read and write. Without motivation, children will read and write relatively little and only what and when they must. This book addresses four main points:

• What children need to learn in these early years
• The strategies that teachers can use to help children acquire these foundations
• The features of emergent literacy and language understandings and skills
• How to design the physical environment in early childhood classrooms to support language and literacy learning

Molly F. Collins, EdD (Boston University), associate professor of the practice of literacy in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College, has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in cognitive development, language acquisition, linguistics, and storybook reading. She has also provided multiyear professional learning experiences on language and literacy for preschool teachers in national and international settings. Previously, she taught toddlers and preschoolers.
Collins directed early literacy and professional educator projects funded by the US Department of Education, foundations, and universities, and she served as principal investigator for foundation- and university-sponsored grants to explore monolingual and multilingual children's vocabulary learning and comprehension from story reading. She is a member of the American Educational Research Association, the Literacy Research Association, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the Society for Research in Child Development, and she serves as part of the National Early Education Council at Jumpstart.
Judith A. Schickedanz, PhD (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), professor emerita at Boston University, taught courses in child development, early literacy, and curriculum and instruction; served as director of the laboratory preschool; coordinated the early childhood program; and helped launch the Jumpstart volunteer program. She taught preschool and has worked extensively with early childhood teachers on funded projects, including Early Reading First.
Schickedanz has authored numerous articles, book chapters, and books, including Understanding Children and Adolescents (Allyn & Bacon, 2000); Increasing the Power of Instruction (NAEYC, 2008); Writing in Preschool (International Reading Association, 2009); Inside Preschool Classrooms (Harvard Education Press, 2018); and What Are Preschoolers Thinking? (Harvard Education Press, 2022). She lives with her husband, David, in Southern California near their son's family and enjoys their two grandchildren, a 10-year-old and a 3-year-old.