When I finished, Lara smiled; everyone present saw that smile. While some doubters would say it was caused by a gas bubble, we all knew it was a function of her first transaction with literature. For many years before Lara went to school and for many years after that Lara heard stories/poems every day at bedtime as well as other times. Daily reading to our children and engaging them in transacting with these texts is a Botel family tradition. My mother always took great pride in describing how she read to me and the delight she felt in my responses. It is also the tradition of many families who understand that this critical experience is typically the making of a lifetime reader and of the fully literate person.

Indeed, practically all children from such literate homes come to school already literate or do well academically no matter how their schools teach literacy. These children have learned to become adept in literacy with the support of parents who provide their children with a literate environment. They simply read to their children daily, tell them stories, talk with them and rejoice in their natural responses and questions.

What exactly happened to Lara from these daily transactions with literature? So many things! At first she absorbed the delightful and tongue tickling patterns of verse: it's intonations, rhymes, its alliterations and rhythms as if by osmosis. Later her developing linguistic awareness lead her to echo read words and sentences with the intonation she heard.

Before long she began to anticipate words in familiar stories and verses saying them with her parents. Her knowledge base grew as evidenced in her expanding vocabulary and comprehension which she demonstrated when she talked and retold the stories when alone, with her dolls and with us. Later, she began doing pretend reading with her books, first of the familiar stories and then in the unfamiliar ones. She began asking questions about her stories and the characters and then about the words. "Where does it say Clickety clack." And more, much more.

Clearly Lara's mind and language were developing and she was becoming literate in ways that children who lacked such experience were not. So when did literacy begin for Lara? When was she ready to listen, to observe, to talk, to read, to write? Isn't it clear that it was a process that began in her first days and continued to evolve in ways that we could see and hear and enjoy. (Some doctoral students, including one of mine, have documented their young preschool children's evolution into literacy as their doctoral dissertations.) Think here of a natural experiment. If Lara and other children had twins who lived in homes that did not provide a rich literate environment of books and talk, isn't it obvious that the twins would not develop literacy in the same degree?

What inferences can be drawn from Lara's and untold other children's transactions with a literate environment? Read to children daily, talk about and encourage talk and later drawing/writing (including invented writing) about books and words and sounds and have them set up their own personal libraries. Do these things and the love of reading, the strategies of literacy and lifelong reading will typically emerge in a natural way like speech itself emerges, like the flowering of plant life emerges most favorably when conditions are most favorable. And what it true in the preschool years continues to be true in the early school grades. Such transaction with literary and informational texts, heard, read and experienced, is clearly one of the critical experiences in developing and extending literacy competence in the young child.

Two productive concepts are highlighted by Lara's experience: transactions with text and emergent reading. From the beginning Lara was allowed to transact with or construct the meaning of poems, stories and informational texts (including books, film, computer and life experiences) in her own way. She was not pressed to learn or master specific things or concepts, yet her vocabulary and interpretation of these "texts" continued to develop or emerge as she listened, observed, talked and read (beginning with "pretend" reading), always bringing her prior experience, knowledge and uniqueness into her responses. In evidence was a continuous process of growth and development. For Lara it meant that literacy began in her first hours and continued to develop over the years. For many primary teachers, these two concepts, which focus on the process of learning literacy have become central to their pedagogy.

These concepts have taken the place of or have become more significant than the more traditional concept reading readiness. Reading readiness is usually defined as a measure or estimate of the extent to which a child is likely too be successful in formal reading (that is in the beginning level of a basal reader). It's based on a faulty notion that reading begins more or less at the age of five or six and is learned essentially by being taught is some sort of sequential way by following the directives of the authors and editors of the school adopted reading textbook series.

Because Lara grew up in the Botel/Sheppard literate environment home, it is no surprise that her literacy continued to emerge from the moment she smiled as her transaction with "The Sound of the Train." Now she is a young scholar in her Sophomore Year in Franklin and Marshall. Ask Bonnie if you want more details on her continually emerging literacy.