Book excerpt: Coming in June 2016! Today's early literacy programs are more demanding than ever. No longer is it sufficient to teach letters, letter sounds, sight words, and simple texts in kindergarten through second grade. Children are expected to read and comprehend texts in a variety of genres with increasing complexity. Then they must integrate the ideas and concepts from those texts into their own writing. Two Books are Better Than One: Reading and Writing (and Talking and Drawing) Across Texts in K-2 helps teachers meet those demands. Each chapter contains an anchor lesson focused on a different way of connecting texts, including: by theme, characters, perspective, structure, or genre. The lessons feature research-based and common core aligned strategies: interactive read-alouds; shared reading and writing; scaffolded small group reading; accountable talk; close reading; and opinion, narrative, and explanatory writing. Each anchor lesson features two high-quality children's books, and each chapter is rounded out with a list of other recommended book pairs to support you in creating your own lessons.