Reading Comes Naturally: A Mother and Her Blind Child's Experiences, by Diane D. Miller, published in the January 1985 issue of the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, Volume 79, pp, 1-4, Nearly 25 years have passed since I first read Diane Miller's article entitled, Reading Comes Naturally: A Mother and Her Blind Child's Experiences in the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness (JVIB). At the time, I had been teaching for nine years and was in my third year working with beginning braille readers in a resource room setting. I had subscribed to JVIB when I was in graduate school and regularly read articles related to children. However, rarely had an article enticed me as much as this one. The personal narrative format was appealing, and, as a teacher of reading, I looked forward to learning from the author's experiences in the area of emergent literacy. In this article, Diane Miller describes her efforts to provide her preschool-aged daughter Jamaica, who was born blind, with the same early literacy experiences as her two sighted siblings. Ms. Miller brought to this challenge her background as a graphic designer, training as a teacher of visually impaired students (when Jamaica was three years old), and a commitment to the whole-language reading philosophy. This approach, which became widespread in the 1980s, advocated a focus on meaning before the introduction of isolated skills; teachers matched instructional activities to individual learners' interests, experiences, and skill levels, while using high-quality, authentic reading materials (Swenson, 1999). The author's first sentences made an impact on me with their message of equal expectations for children who are blind and sighted: I use the word reading in exactly the same sense as when a sighted child picks up a favorite book and thumbs through retelling the story in his or her own words. The child is obviously aware of the meaning and wholeness of that book. Embedded in this introduction are important emergent reading behaviors: independent choice of preferred books; development of book-handling skills, such as locating the front cover and turning pages; the ability to retell a story; the understanding that print or braille contains an important message; and, finally, the sense of pleasure books can bring when the content is motivating. The author notes that families and teachers should encourage children's early approximations of these reading behaviors, as they are important steps along the road to formal literacy. She continues her description of the literary environment she creates for Jamaica with many practical suggestions for assembling homemade books, recording auditory experience albums, and adapting commercial books for young children who are blind. Diane Miller's successful inclusion of Jamaica in her family's literacy activities is a testament to the power of family members as their children's first and most important teachers. …