ABSTRACT
Book reading plays an important role in becoming literate and in preparing preschoolers and kindergartners for success in school. This chapter starts with a discussion of the effects of book reading. Outcomes of a series of studies carried out in European and American families indeed support the role of book reading as the single most important family routine for building understandings and skills essential for reading success (International Reading Association & National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1998). I doubt, however, that book reading fits with every pattern of parenting. Sharing books and stories may be a cognitive stimulus, but, assuming that conversations accompanying the reading of text are a key to the literacy-stimulating function of book reading (De Temple & Snow, chap. 3, this volume; Snow, Tabors, Nicholson, & Kurland, 1995; Whitehurst et al., 1988), book reading may simultaneously be an expression of how parents interact with young children. We have therefore begun to conduct a series of studies that look at book reading in the perspective of the broader relationship context. We examine how differences in the history of interactive experience that parents and children share affect the frequency and quality of parent-child book reading.
