ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the current state of knowledge concerning children’s digital books and suggests a research agenda designed to enhance the field of children’s independent and shared e-reading practices. It summarizes extant research on parent–child reading of digital books at home as part of daily routine as well as at research sites as part of laboratory studies, including both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Digital books carry many names, including e-books, ibooks, apps, storybook apps, iPad books or digital stories. In some literature, the label ‘apps’ is used for interactive digital books and ‘e-books’ for digital books with no hyperlinks or hotspots. Children’s word recognition and story comprehension scores were highest in the interactive digital book condition, read by the children on their own. The chapter provides a concrete example of how the study of narrowly defined features of digital books might provide distinct insights into parent–child and child–text engagement patterns.
