Character education has become the fastest growing school reform movement in the United States. Surveys conducted in the last few years indicate that Americans tend to place character (values) education as the highest priority in school restructuring programs, and there is nothing to suggest that the nation's concern is temporary. Teachers in the United States have been transmitting values to children for as long as there have been schools in this country. The method has been a very simple one--through literature. The primary reason given for using literature in character education is the relevance to the lives of the children that literature can afford. Because many researchers emphasize that values are present in literature and in a variety of genres, finding literature to help in values instruction is not difficult; the challenging aspect is determining how to incorporate the literature into a lesson or unit. This article describes four approaches to teaching values that have been used in schools: values inculcation, values clarification, values analysis, and moral reasoning. (Contains 8 resources.)