ABSTRACT
Today's children increasingly encounter fictional stories through television, Internet sites, videotapes, and DVDs. According to a survey in the census of 2000 of more than 1,000 parents (e.g., Rideout, Vandewater, & Wartella, 2003), children in the age range of 0 to 6 watch television for 1–2 hours a day whereas they spend about half an hour per day reading. In less educated families, television and DVD occupy an even more prominent place in the reality of 3- to 5-year-olds: the 3.5 hours on weekdays soar to up to 6 hours a day in the weekend (Zeijl, Crone, Wiefferink, Keuzenkamp, & Rijneveld, 2005). In the Netherlands, where information technology is widely available, we notice effects of computer programs on young children's literacy experiences in the home. According to a recently published survey (Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, & Kennedy, 2003), 9% of Dutch families dispose of educational software related to reading, a number that has probably grown ever since. Expectations are that the share of onscreen storybooks in young children's activities will further increase during the coming decennia, probably even faster than up until now (Marsh, this volume), thereby causing a gradual shift from adults reading books to young children to young children independently experiencing electronic versions of those same storybooks. Thus there is an increasingly urgent need for a response to the question of how helpful solitary exposure to storybooks on the screen can be, especially now that we see an explosion in electronic media marketed directly at the very youngest children in our society (Marsh, this volume; Wartella & Richert, this volume).
