Shared Book Reading and Bilingual Decoding in Latinx Immigrant Homes

Parents’ Roles in Shared Book Reading

Family literacy is generally viewed as encompassing both school- and home-based social practices, with parents having many assets to offer children (Auerbach, 1989). A robust body of literature has emerged to challenge a deficit view of family literacy practices among Latinx families (e.g., Delgado-Gaitan, 1992; Gallo, 2017; Ordoñez-Jasis & Ortiz, 2006; Reese & Gallimore, 2000; Sonnenschein & Sawyer, 2018; Souto-Manning, 2009), finding, for example, that home learning and literacy environments included multiple physical, emotional, and interpersonal resources that demonstrated a strong valuing of education (Delgado-Gaitan, 1992).

Reading with parents or other adults at home is widely seen as supportive of multilingual children’s literacy development across languages, but how this occurs is likely to vary both across and within cultural groups (Reese & Gallimore, 2000). In a study of immigrants from different countries of origin to the Netherlands, Bus et al. (2000) found that shared book reading between parents and 4-year-olds was “sensitive to the cultural background of the family” (p. 71), particularly with regard to parents’ interest in and facility with reading as a family activity. When considering current research on Latinx families, studies have documented certain practices that differ from those of schools, like patterns of multiparty rather than dyadic parent–child book sharing and a lesser focus on question-asking (van Kleeck, 2006). They have also found varied book-sharing styles among Latinx mothers (Caspe, 2009; Melzi et al., 2011; Schick & Melzi, 2016).

Furthermore, researchers in Latinx homes have found that school-based tasks for children form an important part of family literacy practices, including shared reading of teacher-provided books and collaboration on homework (Delgado-Gaitan, 1992; Reese et al., 1995). In other words, school practices and materials, while imported from outside the home, are integral to—not separate from—home literacy practices. Such findings suggest that book-oriented interactions provide parents in immigrant Latinx families with opportunities to socialize children into literacy-related social practices that reflect individual and familial cultural models and language and literacy repertoires.

Older Siblings’ Roles in Shared Book Reading

Older siblings serve as important mediators of language and literacy socialization of younger siblings (Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, 1989). Particularly in multilingual immigrant homes, practices like shared book reading serve as important sites for the synergistic interplay of school and home/community languages and literacies. Older siblings employ teaching strategies and literacy practices across languages that integrate aspects of formal schooling alongside those from community- and home-based settings, a pattern found across multiple ethnic/racial and linguistic groups (de la Piedra & Romo, 2003; Gregory, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2005; Kelly et al., 2001; Maynard, 2004; Volk, 1999; Williams & Gregory, 2001).

Older siblings in immigrant families from multiple backgrounds take on teaching roles during reading (e.g., Hirst et al., 2010; Kelly et al., 2001). Although such sibling interactions are not unique to Latinx families, they nonetheless align with practices found in some Latin American–background communities, such as helping with household tasks and sibling caretaking and teaching, which require attentiveness and sensitivity to family members’ needs, what López et al. (2015) have called being acomedido/a (see also Volk, 1999). ² There is some evidence that older siblings’ involvement in shared reading and related literacy activities might be particularly prominent either when texts being read are in the dominant societal language(s) (Farver et al., 2013) or when siblings are considered to have stronger literacy skills than do parents in the language of the text (Stavans et al., 2009). However, such roles are always responsive to the dynamic “literacy ecosystem” of particular families, in which older siblings might also help younger children in home-language literacy activities (Kenner, 2005, p. 283) or parents in the context of English literacy events (Orellana, 2003, 2009). Furthermore, the literacy practices siblings employ with each other can vary both within and across families, as Volk and De Acosta (2000) found in a study of Puerto Rican families. What such findings share, however, is a reliance upon the breadth and flexibility of older siblings’ language and literacy expertise—what Orellana and D’warte (2010) refer to through the lens of transcultural skills and dispositions—to engage in reading practices with family members.

In relation to decoding specifically, Gregory (1998) found that children in England who attended both required schooling and voluntary Qur’anic and Bengali community school classes carefully followed older siblings’ guidance, for example, always repeating the phrasing or the corrections provided. These practices aligned more closely (although not entirely) to the Bengali and Qur’anic after-school classes than to their school-day experiences, the latter of which were characterized by limited opportunities to repeat and echo but multiple demands to answer phonics- and comprehension-related questions while attempting decoding. Although more general patterns around older siblings and decoding are difficult to ascertain given the lack of other research available on this topic, Gregory’s (1998) findings clearly highlight the potential importance of older siblings as “models” that younger children tend to emulate and who can provide valuable opportunities for younger children to engage in decoding literacy practices that span school-, home-, and community-based contexts.

Given these findings on families’ mediation of home literacy practices in Latinx and other immigrant multilingual settings and the lack of precise research on what shared book reading looks like in these families, this study aims to contribute to that literature by better understanding prominent literacy practices in which mothers siblings in Latinx homes engage during shared book reading. This work is important because discussions of Latinx students’ early literacy development—which frequently focuses on decoding—continue to overlook the strengths and richness of home literacy practices in Latinx families. By illuminating the particular processes through which families accomplish this work, we support efforts to disrupt deficit perspectives about Latinx families’ literacy practices in general and their expertise in decoding in particular.

Participants

Participants were recruited as part of a larger study (N = 87) examining home language and literacy practices of Spanish and Spanish/English bilingual Latinx immigrant families whose children were 2 to 5 years old when the study began (see, for example, Kibler et al., 2014). Families lived in a suburban/rural area in a South Atlantic U.S. state with a small but growing Latinx immigrant population, but limited to no community- or school-based Spanish instruction for children. Families’ median annual income was US$10,000 to US$19,000 (data collected 2010–2014), and on average, mothers reported completing some (but not all) secondary education. Nine of the original 15 families had a focal child with at least one older sibling (see further information on this subgroup in Kibler et al., 2016). Because of our interest in family book reading that included siblings, we reread field notes for the nine families and isolated all instances of reading during defined book-reading portions of the observations (described below) in which young children, older siblings, and mothers were present (although mothers were at times nearby but not immediately sitting with children). As mentioned above, we found three families in which these arrangements were far more frequent than in others and selected them for analysis; their demographics and typical language-use patterns are presented in Table 1. All three mothers rated themselves as very comfortable reading in Spanish; maternal reports of comfort reading in English ranged from very comfortable to somewhat uncomfortable. Mothers also reported variability in the frequency of dyadic reading (mother to focal child) in English and Spanish. Maternal levels of education also varied across families.

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Table 1.

Family Demographics.

Family	Flores (Family 1)	Hernández (Family 2)	Lopez (Family 3)
Focal child	Vanesa	Carolina	Alma
Focal child gender	Female	Female	Female
Focal child age (in years)	5	5	4
Focal child preschool childcare	Head Start	Head Start	Home care
Focal child grade	Kindergarten	Kindergarten	Not yet in school
English language assessment rankings relative to overall sample	High	High	Low
Sibling	Fabiola	Juliana	Ofelia
Sibling(s) gender(s)	Female	Female	Female
Sibling(s) age(s) (in years)	Eight	Eight	10
Mother birth country	Honduras	Mexico	Mexico
Mother years in United States	12	Seven	13
Mother education (all in birth country)	Some secondary	Completed college	Completed elementary
Comfort reading in Spanish	Very comfortable	Very comfortable	Very comfortable
Comfort reading in English	Very comfortable	Somewhat comfortable	Somewhat uncomfortable
Observed language(s) spoken from mother to children	Primarily Spanish	Primarily Spanish	Primarily Spanish
Observed language(s) spoken among children	Spanish and English	Spanish and English	Spanish and English
Mother reports reading to focal child in Spanish/English	3–6 times/week 3–6 times/week	1–2 times/week 1–2 times/week	1–2 times/week daily

See section “Literacy Interactions and Focal Family Selection” in the Supplemental Material for additional details on family selection.

Data Collection

Data were collected during six in-home visits conducted with each family. Two-hour visits were conducted by bilingual and bicultural research assistants ³ and took place according to protocols established by the research team, including open observation, semistructured play, and book reading with researcher-provided books that the family used as they wished (see section “Family Interactions Before and After Reading” in the Supplemental Materials for details of interactions during nonbook reading portions of visits; see also Kibler et al., 2016).

For book reading, researchers provided three books during every visit. Age-appropriate books were selected based on their availability at the local library or bookstore, and to the extent possible, we matched English and Spanish books at different levels of difficulty for style and structure. Spanish-language texts were made available in odd-numbered visits, and English-language texts were presented in even-numbered visits:

A wordless book was also provided alongside the three books for both English and Spanish weeks (The Lion and the Mouse: Pinkney, 2009). Research assistants were instructed to take out the books, place them near the family members, and explain (in Spanish):

I brought various books for you and [focal child] to use during this part of the project. I will be observing and taking notes while you use the books. You may choose whichever book and use it in whatever way that is most natural for you.

Because the focus of our larger study was on the younger focal children, older siblings’ presence varied depending on whether or not they were at home during observations and their interest in joining interactions. In the three focal families, siblings were present during shared book reading in the Flores family (Family 1) for a total of 83 min across four visits (14–24 min per visit), the Hernández family (Family 2) for a total of 69 min across five visits (9–19 min per visit), and the Lopez family (Family 3) for a total of 23 min across two visits (9–15 min per visit). ⁴

Research assistants took ethnographic field notes (Emerson et al., 2011) as passive participant observers (Spradley, 1980) and audio- and video-recorded the focal child (and any family members with the child) for the entirety of each 2-hr visit. We took several measures to build rapport and trust with participating families by having the same researcher complete all six observations. Research assistants typed up field notes after each visit, reviewing audio and video recordings in the creation and revision of their field notes to clarify or further describe actions, language use, and activities in addition to identifying potential researcher biases and how they may have influenced families’ actions or choices. (See section “Researcher Positionality” in the Supplemental Material for additional information.)

Data Analysis

As described above, we first transcribed shared book-reading interactions from the three families in which family-focused (rather than just mother–child) interactions were most prominent. We then coded interactions according to what are considered traditional dimensions of literacy: concepts of word and print, fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics, reading comprehension, and vocabulary (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). We chose to focus on the most prominent dimension observed, fluency, and in particular the accuracy-focused aspects of fluency typically referred to as “decoding,” which were the sole aspect of fluency addressed, and the most frequent type of interactions in our entire data set. (See section “Literacy Interactions and Focal Family Selection” in the Supplemental Material for an explanation of all types of literacy interactions found in the data.) We then took an explicitly critical and social perspective, analyzing these decoding-related data through the lens of literacy as a social practice, emphasizing in particular the varied social roles played by family members as part of a multidirectional socialization process during decoding.

Following from studies of language socialization, we focused our analysis on instances during shared book reading where there was a “breach” (Garfinkel, 1967), or disruption, in the expected pattern of participation. In the case of decoding, we defined this as a moment of disruption in which family members paused in their shared reading to interact directly with each other. Our analysis focuses on these breaches—which we call “interactions” below—for three main reasons. First, breaches provided a concrete unit of analysis, whereas in an uninterrupted flow of reading aloud, readers are demonstrating or modeling decoding for others but not otherwise engaging in verbal social practices around decoding. However, the more nuanced social practices we discuss below—in which family members corrected each other, hinted, prompted, and changed ownership of the reading—were only visible during breaches. Second, breaches marked moments in which family members sought to support each other during the reading process, a valuable resource for language and literacy development in the home. Third, breaches and their resolutions are theorized to socialize participants into norms of a community (Baquedano-López et al., 2005), or in this case, a family—an important consideration when exploring the nature and potential of home literacy practices. Throughout our analysis below, breaches are described as “interactions” to highlight the interactive nature of these social practices.

As mentioned above, in analyzing which of the aspects of National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) literacy skills were present during shared book-reading interactions, we found that the overwhelming majority of interactions centered on decoding. This pattern was not surprising, given that early literacy instruction often focuses on this aspect of reading, in both the United States (e.g., Juel et al., 2003) and in families’ home countries of Mexico (Secretariá de Educación Pública, 2011, p. 87) and Honduras (Secretaría de Educación, República de Honduras, 2003, p. 41).

After this initial coding, we returned to each family’s audio/video recordings and transcribed all decoding-related interactions. Literacy event boundaries (Bloome et al., 2005) were determined by participants’ physical or verbal entrance into and exit out of the shared book reading. In our transcripts, we included, whenever possible, both verbal and embodied or multimodal nonverbal communication captured in audio/video recordings or field notes. Initial versions of transcripts were written by one team member and reviewed by the full research team. (See Kibler et al., 2016 for transcription conventions.)

We then pattern coded (Miles et al., 2014) within transcripts of decoding-focused interactions. Through this process, we identified four key interactional moves during decoding interactions: correcting, prompting repetition, hinting, and reading for another person (see section “Codebook” in the Supplemental Material). This led us to identify three key decoding social practices: (a) “helping,” through correcting—known as “word supply” (McCoy & Pany, 1986); (b) “teaching,” through prompting repetition and hinting; and (c) “taking over,” through assuming ownership of the reading. At this point, we also identified by family which participants (mother, older sibling, or focal child) were contributing expertise through these social practices, and with texts in which language(s). Findings aligned with these three social practices are presented in Figure 1. It should be noted, however, that we found variation by family in terms of how they enacted practices of helping, teaching, and taking over: These naturally varied by family according to the language and literacy repertoires of the participants as well as the availability of siblings to participate in these practices, issues that we address in the “findings” and “conclusion and implications” sections.

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Figure 1.

Social practices of decoding.

We used several measures to ensure trustworthiness. First, before entering the field, research assistants were trained on multiple topics, including how to help parents clearly understand the study and their rights in consenting to participate; how to respond when parents requested their help with translations, forms, and other issues (which happened regularly); and how to understand their own possible biases. Second, research assistants’ field notes and recordings of observations were reviewed by author Natalia Palacios, a Latinx bilingual immigrant. She discussed field notes with the research assistants in writing and in person to help them revise and improve the notes’ quality in terms of accuracy, as well as to identify and correct any instances of unwarranted interpretations or possible bias. Third, to ensure that the analysis reflected an accurate and shared understanding of the data, recordings of transcribed interactions were viewed multiple times by research team members and discussed at length as codes were being developed and defined. Fourth, all research team members coded the data, and we employed a consensus coding process (Hill et al., 2005), through which differences in coding were resolved through discussion. Fifth, we consistently engaged in self-reflexive conversations about our methodological process.

We acknowledge that our diverse backgrounds, explored in detail in section “Researcher Positionality” of the Supplemental Material, still positioned us as distinct from our participants in many ways, but the explicit acknowledgment of our own differences and our long-standing collaboration supported the critical introspection necessary to engage in this work. Our commitment to equity—shared by all researchers—led us to intensive reflection as well. Because we feared that this similarity might lead us to focus on the assets and strengths of children and families without acknowledging the tensions, challenges, injustices, and contradictions faced by members of nondominant communities, we consistently checked our data analysis and written accounts to ensure that we properly situated literacy practices in these complex contexts.

Decoding Social Practice 1: Helping Through Correcting

Correcting other family members’ decoding—typically just saying the word aloud—assisted in the reading of texts: This “correcting” was received positively by family members and supported rather than interfered with the decoding task at hand. ⁵ This helping differed from the other social practices in that it did not have as explicit a pedagogical purpose as “teaching” (Social Practice 2) and did not directly challenge or alter ownership of the reading as did “taking over” (Social Practice 3). Specifically, this “helping” by correcting did not require the other family member to repeat or otherwise show comprehension. (Without a check for understanding, the action offered a model for decoding but was less overtly pedagogical in nature.)

As Figure 1 indicates, both older siblings and mothers corrected each other and younger children when reading texts in the languages in which they had received more formal schooling (English for the former and Spanish for the latter), although some older siblings did so with younger children in Spanish as well. Younger siblings also attempted this helping practice with mothers while reading English texts, mirroring older siblings’ expertise and social role.

Decoding Social Practice 2: Teaching Through Prompting Repetition and Hinting

Decoding interactions pointed out a second social practice—which we call teaching—with a stronger pedagogical orientation, one that was enacted through prompting readers to repeat after them or providing hints or other clues about words to be decoded. It is significant to note that this social practice was initiated only by older siblings and mothers, not by younger siblings. Mothers engaged in these practices almost exclusively with Spanish texts, although at times they supported older siblings as they taught younger children using English texts. Furthermore, older siblings engaged in teaching social practices with younger children using both English and Spanish books, but they did not attempt these teaching moves with mothers. Such patterns suggest a distinction between helping and teaching practices: In this sense, older siblings’ expertise in decoding was valid as a helping tool with mothers, but this expertise did not allow them to assert “teacherly” identities with caretakers. Furthermore, younger children did not appear to have the social positioning or expertise to directly teach others in these contexts for English or Spanish texts. During these moments of negotiation, siblings tended to use both English and Spanish in conversation, but similar occurrences with mothers typically took place entirely or mostly in Spanish.

Decoding Social Practice 3: Taking Over Through Reading for Another Person

The third and final social practice we identified was taking over, in which a new reader assumed control of the activity. This can be seen as “helping” in an extreme form, but it is notable that this social practice occurred in only one direction—older siblings taking over for mothers—and through negotiations in both English and Spanish while reading English texts. This social practice demonstrates clearly the ways in which shared book reading in mothers’ nondominant languages exposed complicated power relationships between parents and older siblings. It is notable that in these cases, such interactions were dealt with delicately and responsively by older siblings. In our data, younger siblings did not play an active role in these social practices, although they were observers of them.

Social Practices in Action

During interactions, the multiple interactional moves related to decoding (correcting, prompting repetition, hinting, taking over) were often found within single excerpts, and as a result we integrate discussion of those trends throughout the findings—following patterns outlined in Figure 1—rather than exploring each in isolation. First, we briefly describe patterns of younger children’s engagement in the social practice of helping. Second, we look at an interaction to explore how mothers engaged in helping and teaching social practices with older and younger siblings in Spanish, patterns that are common to shared book reading more generally but have elements that are unique to multilingual immigrant families. Third, we present two examples of older siblings’ helping and teaching social practices, showing how expertise was employed in ways that were both similar to and different from those of mothers. Fourth, we analyze two interactions that demonstrate the context-sensitive ways in which older siblings managed the social practice of taking over decoding for mothers.

Contributions

These findings resonate with other research regarding family members’ roles during shared reading in multilingual immigrant and Latinx homes. For parents, our study confirms patterns of involvement in shared book reading (Bus et al., 1995), consistent with family literacy practices documented among other bilingual and immigrant-origin families (Caspe, 2009; Melzi et al., 2011; Schick & Melzi, 2016). For older siblings, our research resonates with previous findings regarding multiparty interactions around shared book reading (van Kleeck, 2006) and the ways in which expertise with the dominant societal language was brought into the home (Howard et al., 2014; Orellana, 2003, 2009; Rothman & Niño-Murcia, 2008). Also, we noted several of the same sibling decoding-related strategies documented in Gregory (1998).

This analysis also provides new insights, particularly into the benefits that a literacy-as-social-practice lens can bring to explorations of multilingual immigrant family literacy practices that socialize children into particular interactional moves while reading. We found unique trends related to helping, teaching, and taking-over social practices around decoding that took place in the context of multidirectional and multiparty teaching and learning events.

First, our study shows patterns of sibling interactions around decoding taking place in the context of mothers’ participation, rather than as part of siblings “playing school” among themselves (Gregory, 2001, 2004). This difference from previous research could be attributable to differences in data-collection procedures, because in our study, we prompted book reading. Such an insight is nonetheless valuable, however, in understanding how older siblings’ work to be acomedido/a (López et al., 2015) may be a cooperative familial accomplishment rather than simply an individual one. Furthermore, evidence of multidirectional teaching was visible when not only older but also younger siblings contributed expertise during interactions, an observation that is often underemphasized in literacy research. Such trends highlight the ways in which literate expertise can be fluid in multilingual immigrant homes.

Second, we found that family members’ support of decoding was carefully attuned to the social roles, needs, and language and literacy repertoires of others. These practices were consistent in being responsive, whether it was through helping or subtly taking over for mothers while reading English books, or working alone or with mothers to teach younger siblings by cueing their participation across languages and modalities. Such trends highlight the ways in which shared book reading is a complex and nuanced social practice in multilingual families, with older siblings playing key roles in this literate ecosystem (Kenner, 2005).

Third, and related to the previous point, like Hull and Schultz (2002), we found evidence that family literacy practices may diverge from what are often more individualistic, competitive practices in schools. Family members in our study tended to cooperate rather than compete with each other, with siblings offering developmentally appropriate ⁸ support rather than “showing each other up.” Family members also noticed when others were struggling and either stepped in to offer support or stepped back to allow readers to demonstrate their expertise. They were disposed to help each other, although social roles existed regarding who could engage in helping, teaching, and taking over in each language. These differences between home and school are important considerations when working to invite all students into the classroom literacy environment. If schools are to achieve some level of continuity between the home and school, honoring home cultures in the process (Ruiz, 1993; Trueba & Trueba, 1989), understanding the nuanced ways that care and responsiveness support learning in Latinx homes may help to inform school practices.

Based upon these findings, we contend that decoding should be given greater empirical and pedagogical attention as a social practice. Comprehension is widely accepted as a social practice, with recognition that there may be multiple rather than singular interpretations of a text, because these situated knowledge creation processes are influenced by readers’ unique sociocultural histories and varied language and literacy repertoires and experiences (New London Group, 1996). Such recognition is not typically extended to decoding. ⁹ In typical school settings, decoding is taught and assessed as an individual and autonomous skill rather than a socially embedded practice. However, decoding should be expected to vary across contexts in its use and the ways individuals support each other while engaging in decoding interactions. Our data suggest some of the multiple processes through which family members may socialize each other into accurate decoding across languages, drawing upon cultural knowledge of appropriate social roles for mothers and children during literacy events.

Cultural models of literacy in general and decoding in particular are dynamic, malleable, and practice-based rather than trait-based (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003; Reese & Gallimore, 2000). To capture decoding as situated in the literacy-as-a-social practice literature, as well as Orellana and D’warte’s (2010) emphasis on multilingual children’s literacy practices, we suggest use of the term transcultural decoding practices to recognize the “breadth and flexibility” (p. 297) of linguistic expertise these social practices both require and develop. In this sense, social practices of helping, teaching, and taking over were a response to immigrant family members’ diverse language and literacy repertoires, as well as a venue for children (and particularly older siblings) to assume a range of social and literate roles across languages that both created and were created by the cultural models of cooperation present in these families. By examining the nuances of these practices, we respond to calls to study the practices of Latinx immigrant families on their own terms, not simply in relation to school-based expectations for engaging in these practices (Caspe, 2009; Schick & Melzi, 2016), but we also recognize that our own set of participants are members of a certain subgroup of Latinx immigrant families in the United States and cannot be held up as a representation of any monolithic community.

Limitations

There are certain limitations to this study that have important implications for what we are able to claim. First, any observational research has the potential to include some performance on the part of the families, even when researchers work to build rapport, be unobtrusive, and ask families to engage in literacy practices as they normally would. Our study design also required that families read books that we provided for a portion of each observation, and so we were not observing spontaneous book reading in families. However, given that literacy-related tasks like shared reading originating from school form part of the literacy practices that occur in Latinx homes more generally (Delgado-Gaitan, 1992; Reese & Gallimore, 2000) and in the families profiled in this study, we have documented home literacy practices that are already occurring. Nevertheless, future work could strive to observe shared book reading more naturalistically, perhaps as books are brought home from school, or with a greater selection of books than we provided.

Second, although there were robust patterns across families, such as all three older siblings engaging in bilingual interactions with younger children for both English and Spanish texts, and all three younger siblings assisting mothers with the decoding of English books, other patterns were less unified. For example, in only the Flores family did the mother use some of these shared book-reading events to actively engage only the older sibling. Furthermore, the Lopez family engaged more frequently when the older sibling was present with the optional wordless book than the English or Spanish text, leading to fewer interactions around the social practice of decoding written texts. Several possible reasons might exist for these differences, though we do not have the data to confirm any with certainty. As a result of these complexities, we are only able to present a range of practices rather than identify precise explanations for variation among families; deeper ethnographic studies with a larger set of participants would be necessary to make such claims. Furthermore, because this analysis focuses only on interactions in which siblings were present, we are also not able to compare siblings’ contributions to family literacy practices in relation to those of parents alone. Finally, we are not able to discern how these social practices of decoding might differ when using Latinx literature or bilingual books.

Implications for Research and Practice

This study nonetheless has important implications. In relation to theory, it highlights the complexity of shared book-reading practices and the sophisticated linguistic, social, and interactional expertise they require. In this sense, shared book reading in multilingual immigrant homes encompasses varied and nuanced practices across languages, particularly for older siblings and other family members serving as linguistic brokers. Views of reading, and decoding in particular, that do not account for the social practices in and through which they occur, and the rich local knowledge they require (Compton-Lilly et al., 2012), can limit how we view families. By examining the variety of mechanisms through which family members engage with and provide support for each other, we expand the notion of shared book reading into a broader understanding of literacy, and in particular decoding, as a social and transcultural practice. This in turn allows both researchers and educators to see the ways in which the teaching and learning of decoding manifest differently according to the social, linguistic, and cultural contexts in which it occurs. Furthermore, in terms of educational practice, our findings are helpful in better understanding how families might make use of books sent home from school, and how older siblings may serve as critical connections between parents and children, as well as between home and school contexts. Ignoring such practices and contexts comes at a considerable cost: Without time spent examining home language and literacy practices, neither educators nor researchers are able to fully respect or build upon children’s and their families’ linguistic, academic, and cultural assets.