aspect of their approach is placing awareness, investigation, and discovery at the heart of teaching vocabulary. They illustrate, through classroom anecdotes, how the best approach to promoting depth is devoting attention to, and use of, words throughout the school day. In fact, throughout the book, the Libens offer wonderful peeks into classrooms. The vocabulary chapter opens with a lovely portrait of a word-focused community, along with an example of a word-focused read-aloud that makes me want to race out and discuss a good book with kids! Part II focuses on the main attraction: comprehension. The foundation—for the Libens and for the field at large—is the Kintsch model of comprehension. That model is explored deeply and clearly here, taking the reader through concepts such as local and global cohesion, textbase, situation models, and standard of coherence, and showing how they matter to comprehension and instruction. They show how the processes that frame Kintsch’s model can and should also frame instructional decisions related to comprehension. At the heart of Part III is the Libens’ version of close reading—a discussion-based, interactive approach, with artful questioning at its core, that aligns with the research on how reading processes work. Artful may sound daunting, but it means a simple pattern of following the ideas, information, and connections across a text. The authors acknowledge a small role for standards and strategies, but explain that relying on them pulls attention away from the text and places it on the standard or strategy. The book’s focus remains on how aspects of the comprehension process operate under real conditions, and they provide powerful examples of encounters with text—examples that are clearly grounded in the authors’ experiences. Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension offers a perfect balance of research findings, instructional recommendations, and suggestions for resources to build and enhance classroom reading experiences. What makes the book refreshing to read, and valuable to classroom practice, is that the authors never lose sight of the goal of reading for understanding, and supporting students in doing that. And they emphasize the importance of undergirding that support with a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world, language, and what can be learned from reading. —Margaret G. McKeown Clinical Professor Emerita of Education, University of Pittsburgh Member of the Reading Hall of Fame
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