McGuinness, Diane

A guide to understanding how children develop language from birth through five years that reviews the latest research revealing how much infants, toddlers, and preschoolers know and can express from the early months on.

The author, a psychologist, explains why teaching children to read with phonics, the whole language method, or some combination of the two does not work and how reading should be taught through hearing the sounds of language and a working knowledge of the spelling code.

An introduction to phonetic sounds, with pictures, poems, and riddles providing examples.