Noting that renaming common folk practices as "emergent literacy" practices legitimizes these unacknowledged ways of learning to read and write, this book highlights the importance of out-of-school literacy experiences and the value of real literature and real writing. It stresses a reciprocal relationship between basic research on the social, cultural, and cognitive roots of literacy and applied research on programs that attempt to create or recreate environments that support children's emerging literacy. The titles of the articles are: (1) "The Conditions that Support Emergent Literacy" (David Lancy); (2) "Early Literacy from a Developmental Perspective" (A. D. Pellegrini and Lee Galda); (3) "Not by Print Alone: Oral Language Supports for Early Literacy Development" (David Dickinson and Diane Beals); (4) "Nonliterate Homes and Emergent Literacy" (Victoria Purcell-Gates); (5) "Parents' Interactions with Beginning Readers" (Christi Bergin and others); (6) "Helping Parents Help Their Children: Early Language Stimulation in the Child's Home" (Ann-Katrin Svensson); (7) "A Microgenetic Study of Cognitive Reorganization during the Transition to Conventional Literacy" (George Kamberelis and Michelle Perry); (8) "Stimulating/Simulating Environments that Support Emergent Literacy" (David Lancy with Susan D. Talley); (9) "Too Little, Too Late: A Case Study of 'Running Start'" (David Lancy with Anne Burke Zupsic); (10) "Discriminating between the Disadvantaged: Adjusting to Family Differences" (Derek Toomey and Judith Sloane); (11) "Parents and Children Sharing Literacy" (Jeanne Paratore); (12) "The Even Start Initiative" (Ruth Wilson and Jackie Aldridge); (13) "It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child: Supplementing Instruction for 'At-Risk' Kindergarten Students" (Eileen Carr); (14) "Play Settings as Literacy Environments: Their Effects on Children's Literacy Behaviors" (Kathy Roskos and Susan Neuman); (15) "'Goin' to Grandma's House': Using Instructional Conversation to Promote Literacy and Reduce Resistance in Minority Children" (Lynne Hudson and others); (16) "Three Different Early Literacy Programs and Their Effect on Inner-City Kindergartners' Emerging Sense of Story" (Lynne Putnam); (17) "Reading Recovery: Teaching through Conversation" (Patricia Kelly and others); and (18) "Designing a Collaborative Model of Family Involvement in Literacy: Researchers, Teachers, and Parents Work Together" (Patricia Edwards and others). A bibliography with 476 items is included. (HTH)