Reading is not just about decoding letters correctly but also to understand what you are reading. With a broadened view on the reading and writing development which includes the four literacy practices: the reader as a code breaker, text participant, text user and text analyst, this study’s purpose is to examine how educational books made for reading comprehension are designed, and which of the four literacy practices named above are represented in the books. To examine this a quantitative and qualitative content analysis on three textbooks and associated assignments have been made, and the following questions answered. How are the books designed and which kind of assignments are in them? Which literacy practices can be found in the books and which of these are given most room? Can the four practices be said to interact?

Earlier studies have shown that educational textbooks often direct the content of the teaching and are often seen as a guarantee that the content in the curriculum is brought up. Other studies have shown the importance of different components and literacy practices presence when teaching in reading comprehension. The study concludes that all of the analysed books are designed in similar ways with a design consisting of tasks to be done before reading the text and tasks and questions to be answered after reading. The study also concludes that the literacy practice which is given most room in the books are the practice called text participant and primarily in the form of tasks that consist of questions about the text for the pupils to answer.