DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Reading to Children and the Bush Agenda

On Reading Books to Children: Parents and Teachers
Edited by Anne van Kleeck, Steven A. Stahl, and Eurydice B. Bauer. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003. 403 pp. Cloth, $89.95. Paper, $39.95.

It is impossible for me to pick up a book on reading these days and not think of George W. Bush, especially if it is about storybook reading. The association comes not from the importance the President has given reading in his own intellectual development ("I've read—I understand reality") or because of his numerous cameo readings to children in classrooms (never mind that when asked to name a favorite storybook in his childhood he answered The Hungry Caterpillar, a book first published a year after he graduated from Yale). No, Mr. Bush comes to mind because he has spearheaded a national beginning reading curriculum that begins at the preschool level with Head Start (School Readiness Act) and continues through subsequent grades (Reading First, part of the No Child Left Behind legislation), mandating what is and is not to be regarded as instructionally significant. Against this overarching yardstick one cannot help ask about any new book on reading, "How does it measure up?"