This paper reviews recent trends within the promotional activities to encourage book-reading among children. The paper argues that a turning point occurred in 2000; the national childrenʼs book-reading year. After that, promotional activities rapidly expanded with both citizen and administrative support. Important characteristics of these activities are a vision to develop book-reading communities and guidance aimed at helping every child to participate in book-reading practices. They are not about enthusiastic volunteers coercing children who like reading to read more books, but about creating networks of professionals who can realize the participation of every child.

 There are four aspects to these characteristics. The first point relates to adult boundary-crossing activities, such as book-start which is 10-minutes of book reading during morning sessions. The second aspect lies in regarding book-reading not as a dialogue between the text and the reader, but rather as a dialogue between an adult and a child, or between one child and another child. Collaborative book-reading activities are encouraged, such as animating book-reading and collective book-reading (e.g.public book readings). A third point is that these promotional activities are not trying to make children read more books but are seeking to foster richer engagements with books through various kinds of interactions, such as conversations with authors (author visits) and competitions to make book cover belts. These activities entail the cultural participation of the professional community that handles books. The fourth point is that the promotions are not aimed at everyone, but are targeted to develop book-reading abilities and interest in children. The school librarian does not stage occasional book-reading promotions, but rather plans an annual program of instruction, such as children reading lists and curricula for reading development.

 As the gaps between socio-economic classes expand, the needs for school libraries and quality book reading are increasing.

 New governmental guidelines on teaching in schools were made public in March 2008. For those who teach in schools, one major issue now is how to cultivate within children capacities for learning, utilization, and exploration. This paper proposes a method, called critical reading and view exchange with other readers, designed to facilitate the acquisition and utilization of basic and fundamental knowledge and skills by pupils through lessons using descriptive sentences, with emphasis on developing capacities to understand sentence structures and logic. The proposal focuses on when and how critical reading and view exchange with other readers should be practiced within elementary schools. The paper also seeks to provide perspectives for the future in terms of implementing new ways of guiding pupils to acquire reading skills.

 Specifically, the paper first discusses the role of procedural knowledge in cognition, from the perspectives of acquiring and utilizing knowledge and skills. Then, drawing on the meta-cognition internalization model, the paper demonstrates how the critical reading and view exchange with other readers method provides a valid means of stimulating the development of a long-lasting capacity to understand the logic and structure of sentences. Furthermore, through analysis of previous critical reading studies in the area of Japanese language education,the paper attempts to clarify the roles and features of critical reading and view exchange with other readers and discusses the methodʼs goals. One first-year lesson-Comparisons among automobile-and one third―year lesson―Various uses of soybeans―are cited as practical examples to illustrate some details of the method. Finally, based on a discussion of lessons employing descriptive sentences in terms of their objectives and methods, the paper demonstrates the importance of advancing the critical reading and view exchange with other readers method as a general way to guide children in reading, rather than methods that simply teach how to interpret sentences.

 In Japan, avid readers of a particular genre of media, such as manga, anime or computer games, are known as otaku. They have constructed a culture for themselves, which is referred to as otaku culture. The principle members in these cultures are young people, ranging from teenagers to people in their thirties. Accordingly, otaku culture is an important sub-culture within Japanese youth culture. This paper reports on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a particular literary club where most of the members were otaku girls.

 Specifically, the study focuses on conversations that took place within group interviews. The principle participants in the study are eight junior high school students. They are all female and members of the literary club at a junior high school. Six of the participants described themselves as otaku girls. The participants were informally interviewed by the researcher, who is also a member of the otaku community. The 45-minute conversation was tape-recorded for subsequent analysis. The researcher also took field notes. In addition, coterie magazines produced by members of literary and comic drawing clubs were employed as data sources.

 Ethnographic analysis was conducted in order to describe how the otaku girls create meaning in reading/writing stories, and how they read/write stories in their daily practices. The results indicate that it is importance for teenagers to have their own safe place. Moreover, reading/writing stories is one strategy for creating such a place and of protecting that space against adult, paternalistic intervention.

 The findings suggest that we should not consider teenagersʼ literacy practices from a perspective of secondary reading that positions such practices as being intermediate. Rather, we should them from an adolescent literacy perspective that investigates new literacy education based on adolescentsʼ vernacular practices of reading and writing.

 Manga and the reading of manga have frequently been subject to criticism. However, manga now often appear within textbooks, signaling a shift from practices that attempted to distance children from manga to practices where manga materials are accepted into school libraries and are being utilized as educational materials. The shift has even progressed to the extent that educational manga are being used in high-school classes and in university courses.

The author would like to encourage the transition from manga reading to educational manga reading. Specifically, the author wishes to utilize manga as textbooks for Japanese language courses and to establish reading circles for educational manga at elementary schools. This paper calls for further investigation of manga.

 The author argues for the recognition of manga as reading materials suitable for morning reading sessions at junior and senior high-school. To that aim, teachers themselves should read manga and should include them in their reading lists. This paper suggests using works like a “Biography of Educational Manga” for investigative study. The paper also proposes comprehensive lessons that integrate the use of manga, such as “Kasai no Hito” and “Mori no Asagao”, as educational materials. Essay writing could also be incorporated.

 Practices of manga reading and educational manga will spread as more teachers come to regard manga as reading materials.

 The purpose of this study is to examine joint infant-mother real-object-centered activities in terms of pointing to direct joint attention during picture-book reading. Twenty infants of 18, 30, and 36 months and their mothers participated in a longitudinal study. In picture-book reading settings, it has been observed that infants point not only to the pictures on the page but also to real objects in the real world. The present study focuses on this phenomenon which is analyzed in detail through observations and interviews. The main findings are as follows. First, in terms of the objects that infants and mothers point at, pointing at real objects was observed in the infants at 18 and 30 months. Second, this paper theoretically argues that pointing to real objects depends upon the level of similarity between the picture and the real object. Third, real objects are categorized into either close objects or far objects within the reading context. In particular, when infants of 18 months point to a faraway object, they walk to the object, and infants and mothers enjoy joint real-object-centered activities. The study suggests that the activity space at that period is wider than that for 30-month-old infants. Fourth, t is also shown that the infant pointing to real objects shifts from pointing without vocalization to pointing accompanied by vocalization. Finally, an important characteristic of picture-book reading with children under 3 years old is clarified.