In an effort to fill this void in the literature, the present study examined patterns of teacher talk around shared-book reading and the association of these patterns with child vocabulary out-comes. The first aim was to evaluate the relationship between teacher talk as it occurs before, during, and after reading books and children’s vocabulary outcomes. Because of the cognitively demanding nature of talk that emphasizes associative knowledge and preschool children’s limited linguistic abilities and basic com-prehension skills, we hypothesized that teacher talk that targets vocabulary and comprehension input after reading would benefit at-risk children’s word learning more than during-reading when it might be too difficult to both understand the story, deeply process new information, and make word and concept connections.