As more schools embrace the new "science of reading" and look to quickly regain what they consider "the losses caused" by the global pandemic in 2020 (Engzell, Frey, & Verhagen, 2021; Storie, Mazzye, & Guilds, 2023), there is a great need for literacy researchers to contextualize the current moment in nuanced ways, and not reify the polarizing reading wars of the past. In this critical moment, we need to avoid reductive approaches that reify deficit perspectives of historically non-dominant communities and their literacies (Turner, 2023). The choices are no longer between whole language versus phonics, criticality versus neutrality, quantitative versus qualitative, or experimental scientific versus phenomenological nonscientific approaches to literacy research. Collectively, the articles in this issue affirm a science of literacies that have foregrounded a wide range of definitions, and empirical approaches to literacy research. From the micro-phonological to the macro-ideological, the articles in this issue demonstrate how literacy research can and should respond to polarizing tendencies.In "Lexical and Sublexical Skills in Children's Literacy," Joana Acha, Gorka, Ibaibarriaga, Nuria Rodriguez, and Manuel Perea demonstrated how, for a sample of 117 Spanish-speaking children, ages 8 to 10, letter knowledge and word identification were key skills for reading and spelling. Their experimental design study particularly showed the importance of understanding how orthographic depth impacts reading. Because Spanish has a more transparent orthography than English, letter knowledge could be a more enduring predictor of literacy, especially for decoding at the sublexical level. The results suggested important insights into the literacy processes of children working with more transparent orthographies such as Spanish.In "Refrains of Friendship in Young Children's Postdigital Play," Kenneth Pettersen and Christian Ehret explored the relational function of literacy in postpandemic and postdigital conditions in a study of how the friendship of two boys emerged across events as they watched YouTube, played Minecraft, and played with construction playthings. Through the concept of refrains, the authors showed the inherent limitations of traditional sociocultural and sociomaterial approaches to literacy that are focused on singular literacy events. More specifically, the authors showed how relational consistencies emerged across events both temporally and spatially. This postdigital condition prompted further analyses of how young children's local encounters with digital media technologies