Denny Taylor believes learning to read can be joyful and fun, even for children who are struggling readers. In five decades of teaching she has never administered a test. She began teaching 5, 6, and 7 year olds in the East End of London in 1968. She has taught many children to read, and many beginning teachers how to teach reading.

Taylor's books about children and reading include: Family Literacy (1983), Family Storybook Reading (1986), Growing Up Literate (1988); From the Child's Point of View (1993), Toxic Literacies (1996), Beginning to Read and the Spin Doctors of Science (1998), Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule (2014), Teaching Without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Children's Literacy Learning (2017), the YA novel Rosie's Umbrella (2015), and the illustrated children's beginning reading book Rat-a-tat-tat! I've Lost my Cat! (2015).

She is the recipient of the MLA Mina P. Shaughnessy Award and has been nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She was inducted into the IRA's Reading Hall of Fame in 2004.