Shanahan (urban education, U. of Illinois at Chicago) and Lonigan (psychology and reading research, Florida State U., Tallahassee) draw together 13 chapters by scholars of psychology, education, cognition and development, and related areas from the US and Australia, who summarize and expand on a 2008 National Early Literacy Panel report, which reviewed the about 7,300 studies on teaching literacy to preschool and kindergarten children, to identify best practices to improve their literacy learning and how these actions can be adjusted for different children in different contexts. The report discussed the methodology used to review the research and detailed 10 early childhood measures that had correlations with later decoding and reading comprehension outcomes (summarized in the first chapter), and analyzed the impacts of code-based instruction, book sharing, parent-home interventions, preschool interventions, and programs to facilitate language development. The chapters in the volume also describe the contribution of large-scale federal research projects to the early literacy knowledge base, the implications of identifying early literacy learning needs for child outcome standards and assessment systems, the relationship between socioemotional development and academic outcomes, phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge, promoting early literacy skills in early childhood education, methodological and practical challenges of curriculum-based language interventions, oral language abilities and later reading comprehension, interventions for children with special needs, and what's missing in the report. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)