Children's reading development research

Who are the most popular children's authors for early years, infants and juniors? What are the elements of these books that are successful? 
Eric Carle (The very hungry caterpillar), Marion Billet (Noodles love to eat) and Raymond Briggs (The snowman) are a handful of popular authors and their respective books for children in the early years of reading. These books are successful due to how they include simple aspects of reading but are still incredibly entertaining to young readers - they engage young readers by keeping the story line simple and include engaging factors such as colourful images involving animals which children really enjoy, and areas where children can use more of their senses such as to touch different sensitive areas like the fur of an animal.
Allan Ahlberg, Judith Kerr and Rod Campbell are popular authors for infants, and
Roald Dahl, Julie Donaldson and Michael Bond are popular authors for juniors.
As children get older and their reading capabilities and vocabulary increase in complexity, stories become more engaging by including a meaning to the story - a bit like a moral to the story - while books stay engaging this helps children in their wider learning as well as just reading.

How are children taught to read in schools (there are different approaches so read more than one source)? What are the arguments for and against current approaches? Make sure you cover synthetic phonics and reading schemes.

In school, children are taught to read in numerous ways, one of which is by the words phonemes - 'phonics'. This is the most widely known method to teach reading, where the children must first be taught the alphabet and learn the letters and sounds that the letters make. Once having learnt the single letter sounds they are taught to blend letters together, making simple words and then adding another letter and so forth, e.g. a-t, i-t, c-a-t, f-l-a-t. 
Another method is the 'language experience approach'. This involves where a child may draw an imagine, and the caregiver will write a sentence about that image, such as 'the cat sat on the hat'. The child can then trace over these words to understand the meaning of them - this is a way to enhance a child's vocabulary in a meaningful way. Some people use this method as a first approach to reading to help their student understand what they've drawn and what you have written is a form of communication.
Another method is the 'context support method'. This is where a book will contain a long sentence read by the caregiver, and a much simpler, shorter sentence available to read by the child, often just 1 or 2 words. The books help the child stay engaged by using images such as cars or animals.
'Look and say' is a 4th method used to help children read. Using this method children learn to understand whole words or short sentences instead of just sounds - children will look at a word which the caregiver says and try to repeat the sound. Flashcards with pictures are usually used here. It is recommended that short sentences rather than individual words are used for this method. The caregiver should write a short sentence representing a picture displayed. They will then say the sentence and ask the child to repeat it while pointing at each individual word as the child repeats it.

What sorts of 'miscues' (virtuous errors based on misapplication of reading skills) do young readers make and how are caregivers encouraged to deal with them (again, numerous ways)?
Examples of errors that readers make(especially struggling readers) are 'whole word' errors when trying to visually recognise entire words as a whole unit, instead of simplifying it and just processing the printed word by sound. These errors indicate that children are not processing the prints phonetically - they generally mistake words for 'sight words' words which they have already learnt that look similar to the word they are trying to say, a few examples are:
mistaking every for very, scrape for escape, and agree for argue.
Tracking errors are similar to whole word errors - in this case, children are not looking at the words from left to right to sound it out properly, they look at the word as a whole and mix up the letters in the word - in these errors, the words they say are often contain the same letters but are in the wrong order. Examples of these are was for saw and slip for spill. There are many other mistakes children can make, including word guessing errors and letter confusion.
To deal with these mistakes, adults and caregivers are encouraged to firstly praise the successes of the child's reading abilities, if they have correctly read other parts of the text. When dealing with the mistakes, they are advised to allow the child to speak even slower, making sure they aren't rushing over the words and reading them as a whole, ensuring they read properly from left to right, and are also advised to read aloud to the child to help them understand what they are reading and imitate how they say a word - linking to Skinner's idea that children learn language from imitation.