This special issue of "Early Child Development and Care" focuses on the issues involved in researching the views and experiences of young children. Challenging issues need to be addressed. For example, what constitutes ethical questioning of children? What are young children's rights as research respondents? What is meaningful 'informed consent' for a four-year-old? Is this different for an older child? What topics are or should be off-limits in research? How reliable are children's views as sources of data? Should children's views directly affect policy? How young is too young to be a research respondent? Is 'involving children in research' synonymous with 'obtaining data from children'? Where else in the research process can or should young children be involved? How can children object to aspects of research that they don't like? Are there positive benefits for children who take part in research? How do we treat children's expressed views or experiences to avoid the Scylla of naive valorization of everything that they tell us and the Charybdis of disbelief or suspicion of whatever they may have to say? What is a fair, respectful and scholarly way to critically engage with data obtained from young children? How can the power dynamics of researcher and researched be addressed when researching with young children? What is the proper place of parents, staff and other adults in research that is explicitly child-focused? The contributors to this issue offer the best of both worlds. The theoretical, methodological and ethical challenges of eliciting younger children's perspectives are carefully considered as are the detailed practicalities of conducting fieldwork and data collection with children.