About our authorsPeter Dewitz is an educational consultant and researcher who spends most of his time working with teachers and children in public schools. Peter has taught at the University of Toledo, the University of Virginia and Mary Baldwin University and has worked as a visiting researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He taught in the upper elementary grades and his major research interests are educational materials (specifically the efficacy of reading programs), the development and instruction of reading comprehension, and the uses and abuses of assessments in our schools.Michael F. Graves is a professor emeritus of literacy education at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Reading Hall of Fame. Mike taught in the upper grades, and his research and writing focus on vocabulary learning and instruction and comprehension instruction. His current major research effort is an IES-funded research and development project on teaching word-learning strategies.Bonnie B. Graves is a full-time education writer and the author of 15 books for children. Bonnie taught in third and fourth grades, and her major interest is making literature enticing and accessible to beginning and middle-grade learners. In addition to writing, Bonnie currently spends time working with children, teachers and other educators on children's writing.Connie Juel is a professor of education at Stanford University. Her research centers on literacy acquisition, especially as it is affected by school instruction. She is noted for both her longitudinal research on reading development (often following children across multiple school years) and her work on interventions to help struggling readers. She was awarded the National Reading Conference's 2002 Oscar Causey Award for outstanding contributions to reading research and was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame by the International Reading Association in [...] up with the Teaching Reading in the 21st Century author team! Visit them at [...] to read their blog posts, discover helpful teaching suggestions, or to contact them directly.