This book, presented as a conversation among its three authors, offers strategies for theme exploration in whole language classrooms and focuses on the first and fourth grades. The book asserts that exploring a theme with students is the epitome of whole language teaching because students develop language and literacy best when they use language to gain understanding of a wide range of topics, themes, and concepts. The book's first section describes how a unit on robots became a journey of theme exploration; offers a definition of whole language principles and goals; and describes one teacher's journey from a basal to a whole language approach. The following section details the development of a fourth-grade theme exploration project about improving the world by focusing on environmental, social, and technological issues. The next section outlines a first grade theme exploration project titled Metaphors and Meteorology. The two final sections are retrospective assessments of both the fourth- and the first-grade projects. A 67-item bibliography of children's fiction, nonfiction and poetry books, an extensive bibliography of professional books and articles, and an equally extensive bibliography designed to aid teachers' selection of children's books are included. An appendix titled "What is whole language"; a second appendix titled "The fourth-graders' play"; and a third appendix titled "Selecting theme books" are also attached. (SAM)