Karl Gerstner is one of Switzerland's—and therefore the world's—best and best-known graphic and typographic designers. His high ambition in this book, first published in German in 1972, is to provide a complete and systematic taxonomy of writing, a programmed investigation into the underlying structure of script and type; Gerstner writes that his book is meant to "encompass the aspects and possibilities of the alphabet in their totality." It is this systematic and programmatic approach that sets the book apart. Most studies of typography and its larger graphic setting and context are concerned with the history of the development of writing and printing, or are collections of typographic models or typical examples, or are textbooks on layout and design. This one is organized into five sections that take up, in turn, Script and Speech—the relation between writing and language, different alphabets, reading directions (the eye follows directions and moves in a direction), style; Manual Graphics or craft—materials, tools, methods, procedures, reproductive techniques; Images—letter pictures, word pictures, sentence pictures, handwriting, size, proportion, type weight, form, harmony, texture, brightness, color; Function—as effected through dimensioning, spacing, grouping, layout, integration; and Expression—as achieved through coordination, articulation, emphasis, diversion, and the spirit of play. As a physical object, the book is more than a passive repository of examples of typographic display. It makes a dynamic and integrated typographic statement of its own and as a whole as it progresses and develops in accordance with its internal program. The book is nearly square and opens vertically rather than horizontally. Type is printed on only one side of the sheets, which are folded back on themselves along the outer edge to form double leaves, so that there is no distracting show-through "noise." There are words printed in blind embossing and stencil cutouts. And color is used with an elegant restraint, appearing only at the book's mid-section climax—its very sparseness amid the prevailing sharp black and white contributes a luxurious effect.

Taking a medieval approach in content as well as in form - a compilation of lists - this voluem creates a foundation for the study of the medieval mindset by establishing the terms and concepts of that scholars would have had in common at the time: an invaluable lingua franca.

The book summarises research findings from a range of projects using a set of auditory and speech procedures designed for the psycholinguistic framework developed by Stackhouse and Wells (1997). These procedures have been used with children and adolescents with a range of difficulties associated with cleft lip and palate, dysarthria, dyspraxia, phonological impairment, Down syndrome, dyslexia, stammering, autism, semantic-pragmatic difficulties, general learning difficulties, and disadvantaged backgrounds. The procedures have also been used with normally developing children in the age range of 3-7 years. As a result, the book includes descriptions of typical performance on the procedures so that atypical can be identified more easily. In addition, as the materials were used in a longitudinal study of children’s speech and literacy development between the age of 4 and 7 years we can highlight which procedures will help in identifying children a) who are likely to persist with their speech difficulties and b) have associated literacy difficulties.

A must-read for parents and teachers, this major bestseller reveals how cultural literacy is the hidden key to effective education and presents 5000 facts that every literate American should know. In this forceful manifesto Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that children in the United States are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. They lack cultural literacy: a grasp of background information that writers and speakers assume their audience already has. Even if a student has a basic competence in the English language, he or she has little chance of entering the American mainstream without knowing what a silicon chip is, or when the Civil War was fought. An important work that has engendered a nationwide debate on our educational standards, Cultural Literacy is a required reading for anyone concerned with our future as a literate nation.

Books Come Alive: Reading Aloud and Reading Along with Young Children is about using read alouds to promote empathy and the ability to think deeply in response to literature. Grounded in research and theory, the book explores how to ensure that read alouds have maximum instructional value to promote literacy and spark children’s lifelong love of literature. This book offers teachers information about book selection, how to plan for and conduct read alouds, and extend children’s experiences. The book also includes a vetted and extensive compendium of high-quality books for read alouds, accompanied by a framework for teaching with those books.