Sean Walmsley is a Professor in the Reading Department at the State University of New York at Albany. He has taught in the United Kingdom and in the US in both elementary and secondary schools. For the past 15 years, he has been working closely with a small number of school districts helping teachers rethink their K-8 language arts programs. Sean received his B.A. and M.A. in History at Trinity College, Dublin University (Ireland), and his Ed.D. in Reading at Harvard University. For the past four years, Sean has been researching the teaching and learning of literature in elementary and middle schools, funded through a federal grant to the National Center for the Teaching and Learning of… Literature at SUNY-Albany.