The key tasks for everyone concerned with education are enabling children to learn to read and to become lifelong readers. There is a growing number of books on the subject, each with a particular audience in mind.

Supporting Readers focuses on pupils experiencing difficulty with reading between the ages of seven and 11. It has been written for student teachers, newly qualified as well as experienced key stage 2 teachers and higher education tutors and those involved in the initial training of teachers. It aims to encourage teachers to adopt a wide range of intervention strategies, opportunities and challenges which integrate reading, writing, speaking and listening; an approach that can be part of the general classroom work for all children.

The authors are critical of current reading strategies in use in classrooms for this age group. They compare such strategies with the findings of their own small-scale research project involving approximately 18 children in 12 schools. Over a 15-month period they studied the reading progress of the children through the use of a range of tests. Half the children were in six schools which claimed to have an integrated approach to reading. The other half were in schools which were said to have a schematic approach which involved the use of a narrow set of structured reading materials for teaching struggling readers.

The authors found that the children taught by the integrated approach made significantly more progress in reading age and comprehension in comparison with the other group.

They also found that this approach produced more confident, accurate and fluent readers. They accept that to generalise from such a small-scale, exploratory study is problematical but, nevertheless, they do concentrate attention on the vital role key stage 2 teachers need to play in the reading development of children.

As well as the interesting chapter on children’s own opinion of themselves as readers, there is a useful chapter on the integration strategies used in the study and their practical application in the classroom.

The Reading Solution has a very different focus. Its purpose is to provide parents with advice and ideas about how to help their children develop as readers for life.

It begins by exploring some basic principles for all parents, looking at stages in reading development and the ways in which parents can work with their child’s class teacher.

The importance of establishing a partnership with their child’s school is stressed and there is an interesting section to guide parents in assessing the quality of a school’s reading policy.

The authors also focus on the reading needs of specific age groups and finally concentrate on different kinds of readers, (for example, the bored reader), dealing with reading difficulties and nurturing the gifted reader. The book concludes with a general commentary on the importance of literacy.

There are margin notes to enable parents to discuss the ideas with each other and to provide a range of useful information, addresses, advice and ideas including a recommended list of books.

There are likely to be many parents who will find the book helpful, not least in clarifying their role and in offering practical advice and guidance.

The title, however, is somewhat misleading. We know from research evidence that underachievement in reading persists in our education system. We also know that a high percentage of those children who do underachieve come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and are likely to have parents or carers who, for a range of reasons, would, regrettably, find this book inaccessible or simply an unrealistic solution in relation to their particular circumstances.