Book excerpt: A collection of papers exploring why children acquire speech easily yet bog down when it comes to learning to read. Why do most children acquire speech easily yet bog down when it comes to learning to read? This important question is the starting point for the twenty-two contribution to Language by Ear and by Eye. Based on a research conference on "The Relationships between Speech and Learning to Read," which was sponsored by the Growth and Development Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, the book brings together contributions by distinguished specialists in linguistics, speech perception, psycholinguistics, information processing, and reading research.