Abstract
Stories play a critical role in the literacy development of young children, providing them with rich experiences that support their growth as readers. In this chapter, we first describe the landscape of stories in e-books and educational media. We then move to examine the potential for media to reach preschoolers from low-income communities, presenting two case studies of children who read stories in both live and digital media. The research question guiding these case studies was: How effectively can digital books reach young children from underserved populations? Findings from the first case study revealed no differences between the digital or live platform. Preschool children were able to learn from digital platforms and had similar early literacy gains as children who experienced live presentations of storybooks. Findings from the second case study demonstrated that the content of the storybook actually had a stronger influence over a child’s comprehension than the medium did itself, suggesting children’s interest in stories are critical for early literacy. Accordingly, this book chapter does not recommend against the use of digital storybooks, but pushes for a both-and agenda between digital- and live-story use to cultivate emergent literacy among young children and unlock the power of a story.
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Wong, K.M., Neuman, S.B. (2019). The Power of a Story: Reading Live and Electronic Storybooks to Young Children. In: Kim, J.E., Hassinger-Das, B. (eds) Reading in the Digital Age: Young Children’s Experiences with E-books. Literacy Studies, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20077-0_9
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