When it comes to interactions with your child, reading is one of the best things you can do with them – whether you’re reading board books, picture books, or even a grocery list, this activity is important to their early literacy development.

The physical acts of sharing print books – including reading, touching, smelling, and even tasting – are all part of an important bonding experience that helps children develop a love for reading. Along with physically sharing books, the intellectual connections involved in sharing books are essential. When your child points to different pictures on the page, when a parent mimics animal sounds as compared to the animals in a book, or when a parent asks their child what will happen next in the story – these all are important interactions with books that your child needs for literacy growth.

Babies learn through touch and need more durable books, like board books, in order to explore reading. The Library offers a number of board books, and even Babybug Magazine, which are sturdier and geared towards our littlest listeners to share in interactions with books. As children grow older and learn how to use and take care of books, picture books become the norm. However, another viable option to share reading with your child is picture books in eBook format.

Today, screens take up large chunks of our time, but how do we dictate screen time for our children? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) suggests that children under two should have no screen time (other than video-chatting), as children’s brains develop best through personal interactions. The AAP also recommends that children over 2 years of age should limit their screen time to no more than 1 hour per day of high-quality, educational content. With these suggestions in mind, limited eBook use is still a great option for you and your family. If you are sharing eBooks with your child and are using this as a bonding opportunity to point out pictures, talk about words, sing songs, or ask questions, this still creates a positive shared experience.

eBooks open up a whole new world of titles and ease for users. If you’re stuck at an appointment or at home, unable to get to the library, you can check out our online resources for picture books and, voila! — Instant entertainment at your child’s fingertips.

When using eBooks, some titles have “enhanced” options, which could include different noises or movements when you touch on pictures. These kinds of “enhanced” features may be entertaining for your child, but they don’t allow for the important interactions you would find when using print books and which are necessary for early literacy development. You and your child are better off using versions of eBooks without all of the bells and whistles of added movement and noise to keep the positive shared experience with your child.

If you’re interested in trying out digital picture books, we offer picture book selections through Hoopla, as well as through Tumblebook Library – all you need is your DPL library card! Picture books on Hoopla are simple and straightforward, just as a picture book in your hands would be. You’re allowed 10 checkouts per month on Hoopla, so all you need to do is borrow them on your computer or device, and you’re ready to go! Tumblebooks offers a variety of storybooks, read-alongs, eBooks, and nonfiction, and has a larger selection with narration and movement. Tumblebooks allows you and your child the option of reading the book on your own, or having a narrator read the story as you follow along. When viewing Tumblebooks, you will need an internet connection, as you don’t check these books out, but watch them from the Tumblebooks website. Both of these resources are great for sharing digital picture books with your child, if you choose to do so!

When It Comes to Children’s Picture Books, Which is Better, Paper or Pixels?

Digital picture books have been a godsend during the pandemic. With libraries shuttered and bookstores a nonessential trip, many parents have downloaded book after book on tablets and smartphones to keep their little ones reading.

But when the pandemic is over, many parents will face a dilemma. Should they revert back to print or stick with e-books? Do kids absorb and learn to read more from one format versus the other?

A new analysis of all the research on digital picture books, published in March 2021, helps to answer this question. The answer isn’t clear cut: paper generally has an edge over digital but there are exceptions. Digital books can be a better option with nonfiction texts and for building vocabulary. Some digital storybooks were better; researchers found that certain types of story-related extras seemed to boost a child’s comprehension but they were rare.

In large part, the research on digital picture books for children echoes what we’ve seen in studies of e-books for adults. Reading comprehension is superior on paper but the benefit of paper appears to be stronger for adults and smaller for children. Scholars think the reasons behind the brain’s preference for paper may be different for the two groups. In the case of adults, it may be a lack of effort that we’re putting into reading on screens. In the case of children, it may be that many of the bells and whistles that are commonly added to digital picture books — buttons to click on, pop ups, games and sounds — are distracting.

Digital picture books have been around since the 1980s but there’s surprisingly little research that directly compares how much young children absorb in digital and in print and measures learning in a reliable way. A team of European researchers scoured the research literature and talked to experts around the globe and found only 39 studies that measured reading comprehension, vocabulary development or both.

Natalia Kucirkova, a professor of early childhood development at the University of Stavanger in Norway and one of the authors of the March 2021 picture book meta-analysis, explained that her team wanted to learn which digital enhancements were working and which weren’t. They categorized all the add-ons as either story related or not story related. They found that the more unrelated bells and whistles, the worse a child’s comprehension was after reading the digital version of the story, compared to the print version.

“Even small digital enhancements actually make a lot of difference both ways, they can work well, or they can distract the child,” said Kucirkova.

For Kucirkova, improving digital books is a matter of “social justice”. “Unfortunately, many digital books are of really low quality,” she said. “We mustn’t forget that there are many families where reading is not an activity that adults enjoy and they might not enjoy it with their children. So in those families, having a book that reads to the child is a huge asset. At the very least, we need to equalize the quality of the two formats.”

Excerpted from “Proof Points: Paper beats pixels on most picture books, research finds” in The Hechinger Report. Read the full article online.

Source: The Hechinger Report | Proof Points: Paper beats pixels on most picture books, research finds,  https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-paper-beats-pixels-on-most-picture-books-research-finds |

© 2021 The Hechinger Report

If you are a parent or caregiver and would like to schedule an evaluation or get advice about your child’s challenges, call or email a CHC Care Manager at 650.688.3625 or careteam@chconline.org