In this review essay, I refer to two recently published scholarly works that explore the notions of transcultural, mobile and placed literacies: in Languages and literacies as mobile and placed resources edited by Sue Nichols and Collette Snowden, and Literacy lives in transcultural times edited by Rahat Zaidi and Jennifer Rowsell. Much research in the field of literacy education has recently acknowledged how literacies are continually changing due to globalisation and transmobility. People move, places change, and objects shift in and through these spaces. Researchers and educators are, therefore, grappling with how best to address these diversities and engage learners in such environments. Through a review of the books mentioned above, two key questions are explored: what are the appropriate pedagogies for literacy education? Where and how is literacy education research leading us into the future? This review takes a socio-cultural perspective of literacy by presenting the contemporary research that attempts to answer these questions.