ABSTRACT
Educational researchers praise the practice of parents and teachers reading to children. In a book aimed at helping parents provide their children with useful learning experiences, for example, Butler and Clay (1979) asserted: “There is no substitute for reading and telling stories to children, from the very earliest days” (p. 17). Based on his review of the literature on reading to children, Teale (1981) concluded that “reading to preschool children … is an activity through which children may develop interest and skill in literacy” (p. 902). And in Becoming a Nation of Readers, Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson (1985) cited reading to children as “the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading” (p. 23). Moreover, a number of correlational studies have linked activities in which adults and preschool children share book reading to the children’s beginning reading success in school (Durkin, 1966; Hewison & Tizard, 1980; Moon & Wells, 1979; Walker & Kuerbitz, 1970).
