Book excerpt: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Reading Perspectives and Practices focuses on the experiences of reading from a young age to maturity and the different ways reading is encountered: in other words, the processes involved as well as the outcomes. The international group of experts, within both teaching and academia, focuses on reading in school: how is it taught? What is taught? How is it assessed? Controversial issues are explored: the acquisition of phonics; teaching the canon, including or ignoring digital texts; the advent of standards-based tests. The contributions also consider people's biographies of reading, their memories of reading in school and their current views on literature. Together, this well-edited volume provides a more complete view of reading than is currently on offer, exploring all aspects of what it means to be literate and how we define being literate.