Drawing on her expertise in using children’s literature to foster literacy in today’s multicultural classrooms, Donna Norton has crafted a contemporary, application-rich book that will enable teachers to “put reading first” and provide high-quality, research-based instruction in reading and the language arts.

Written by one of today’s the top literacy scholars, Literacy for Life prepares teachers for the central and important goal of developing lifelong readers by emphasizing higher cognitive and thinking skills while using high quality literature. Donna Norton’s expertise in children’s and multicultural literature is evident throughout, particularly in the wealth of extraordinarily and meticulously well-chosen examples of children’s literature to support literacy development.

Literacy for Life makes major advances over existing resources by broadening the context of literacy, including detailed examples of real lesson plans, instructional units, and illustrated examples as well as strong coverage of writing. All of these, plus the “Extend Your Reading” activities in each chapter have been tested in public school classrooms by the author and her protégés. In addition, the observation recommendations were field tested by teachers-in-training.

Literacy for Life has a strong emphasis on IRA/NCATE Standards and up-to-date scholarship on the No Child Left Behind legislation, along with many recent newspaper articles demonstrating the currency of reading issues.

Lastly, Literacy for Life covers all the topics necessary to the preparation of literacy teachers, including: emergent literacy; phonics & phonemic awareness; vocabulary development; comprehension; fluency; assessment & evaluation; reading & literature in the content areas; reading & writing; literacy instruction for ELL, multicultural, and special needs students; computer-assisted instruction; and developing instructional programs that work.