This edited volume grew out of a conference sponsored by the National Reading Research Center, funded through the Office of Educational Research and Improvement by the U.S. Department of Education. The purpose of the conference was to bring together beginning reading experts from the fields of education and the psychology of reading and reading disabilities so that they could present and discuss their research findings and theories about how children learn to read words, instructional contexts that facilitate this learning, background experiences prior to formal schooling that contribute, and sources of difficulty in disabled readers. Presenters wrote drafts of their chapters prior to the meeting; these were read by others and discussed at the meeting, and revisions were written to produce this volume.