ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how reading affects the bodies and, vice versa, how the bodies affect the reading. It compares traditional paper reading with digital reading, highlighting areas of difference and identifying areas where the reading body seems to play a pivotal role in generating these differences. Using the digital-paper distinction as a point of access, the chapter provides an overview of the evidence suggesting that the bodily actions performed around literacy activities affect reading comprehension and also transportation (the feeling of being transported into a story-world). The research on transportation has mostly been conducted on university students, although anthropological material about the integration of digital formats into children's lives enables to draw tentative conclusions about how the child's body is being shaped in relation to different formats. Finally, the chapter describes a literacy education program that suggests that this would indeed produce the desired results.
