Book Choices for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Parents: Strategies for Sharing Books in Bilingual Homes.

This chapter is part of a book that recounts the year's work at the Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) at Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi. Rather than an "elitist" laboratory school for the children of university faculty, the dual-language ECDC is a collaboration between the Corpus Christi Independent School District and the university, with an enrollment representative of Corpus Christi's population. The chapter details a study, involving parents and grandparents of children at the ECDC and another district school (Zavala Elementary), which examined the effect of parent literature choices on the second-language literacy learning of children involved in dual-language and immersion programs. Findings showed that parents at both the more Spanish-dominant Zavala school and the ECDC selected English-language books to read to their children, although their reasons differed. Zavala parents valued the academic and economic role of English, while ECDC parents often could not read Spanish-language books. (Contains 8 references and lists 13 children's books.) (EV)