Raising Readers (revised edition)

By Megan Daley
Reviewed by Annaleise Byrd

Megan Daley is a celebrated Brisbane teacher-librarian and co-founder of the Your Kid’s Next Read Facebook community and podcast. Her debut non-fiction title, Raising Readers: How to nurture a child’s love of books, was published in 2019. This enormously valuable teacher and parent resource has now been ‘fully revised and updated’. It is clearly differentiated from the earlier edition by its eye-catching tangerine cover, yet retains some teal elements and the original cover illustration as visual ties to its roots.

The new edition of Raising Readers opens with a foreword by 2024-2025 Australian Children’s Laureate Sally Rippin, who highlights Australia’s falling reading rates and reflectson her own experience supporting a child for whom reading did not just ‘click’ in the way it has historically been assumed to do. Rippin notes that teaching children to read is not a parent’s responsibility; it is ‘a complex cognitive process best taught by a professional’. Nevertheless, parents can do many things to support this process at home, and, Rippin notes, ‘Raising Readers is bursting with creative and informative ways to do this’.

As implied in Rippin’s foreword, the chapter titled ‘Reading and School’ has been substantially overhauled. The new edition acknowledges Daley’s own journey towards understanding and applying the Science of Reading, a shift that is clear when comparing this chapter’s content to the version published six years earlier. As Daley says, ‘when we know better, we can do better’. If you already own the earlier edition of this book, this is one of the strongest arguments in favour of switching to the new one – especially if you have, or work with, young children who are learning to read.

The new edition also contains updated reading lists and new sections in some of the chapters. Some of the new subheadings include ‘Digital literature’ and ‘How to create a librarymakerspace’. Several subheadings from the earlier edition have also been removed, including ‘Reading differences and difficulties’. Another compelling reason to upgrade to the new version is that it contains several pages by author Kate Foster, a champion for accurate and empowering disability and mental health representation (many other authors and educators also contributed to this book; their biographies are included in the back matter). As noted by Rippin, this edition ‘supports the social model of disability which, unlike the medical model, encourages us to change the system, not the person’.

Raising Readers is an essential guide for all adults who live or work with children we hope will become, and remain, competent and enthusiastic readers. In addition to appreciating this book in my capacity as a parent, children’s author and general admirer of Megan’s work, for years I have also given it as an end-of-year teacher gift. Each time, I hope its warmth, wisdom, Australian focus and school library advocacy will be soaked up by my children’s classroom teachers, encouraging them to prioritise and model reading, respect graphic novels, seek out Australian children’s literature, and advocate for school libraries.

This year, I’m looking forward to giving the new edition!

UQP 2025
Megan Daley

Annaleise Byrd is the author of middle grade portal fantasies Losing the Plot and Down the Plot Hole, and the picture books You Are Not a Pup!