This book considers the factors that have influenced the design of books for teaching young children to read, including educational directives and reports, views about legibility, methods of teaching reading, the availability of typographic resources and the economic constraints faced by publishers.

Teachers and educationalists have played a considerable part in influencing the ‘look and feel’ of this kind of book. This, in combination with craft tradition in the form of the intervention of the compositor and printer, has resulted in the development of a generic form, recognised by typical visual attributes at a particular time that relate closely to (perceptions of) usage.

The book has numerous illustrations including an annotated timeline showing examples of reading books published in each decade from the 1890s to the end of the twentieth century.