Frank Smith is internationally acclaimed as an essential contributor to research on the nature of reading and as an originator of the modern psycholinguistic approach to reading instruction. In his publications his aim has always been to support teachers, to encourage them to make teaching decisions based on knowledge and understanding, to analyze what their students are trying to do and why what the students are doing doesn’t always correspond with what they are expected to do. Now the major topics addressed in his work are available in one volume, Landmarks in Literacy, a thoughtfully crafted selection of 16 of his key writings.

In the World Library of Educationalists, international scholars themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest works so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers thus are able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field, as well as the development of the field itself.