Fredericks (education, York College, Pennsylvania) has some 38 years of experience in education as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, curriculum coordinator, staff developer, professional storyteller, and college professor. He offers K-8 librarians and teachers specific information and detailed guidelines for using readers theater to promote fluency and the five other "Reading First" principles. After examining reading fluency, instructional methods for developing fluency, assessing fluency, and ways that readers theatre develops fluency, Fredericks explains how to get started with readers theatre, find and create scripts, perform for an audience, and use readers theatre to develop fluency across the curriculum. The text also contains lesson plans, reproducible forms, and 16 complete scripts ranging from fairy tales, legends and folktales to nonfiction and informal works, songs and rhymes, historical and realistic fiction, and humorous adaptations of well-known children's stories. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)