How Well Suited are Electronic Books to Supporting Literacy?

Abstract

This article discusses children’s picture story books on the computer (also known as e-book, CD-ROM story book, talking book, living book, interactive book, digital book, disc book or computer book). These books minimally include an oral reading of the story instead of or in addition to printed text. We put together a collection of 55 Dutch and 5 well known English electronic books that were commercially available between 1995 and 2002 for children in the age range from three to seven years. We conducted a content analysis to find out how well books currently commercially available on CD-ROM are indeed suited to supporting children’s literacy. Our coding focused on multimedia additions, interactivity of pictures and interactive legibility. Based on studies into effects of electronic books, we describe which books on CD-ROM can serve as models for parents, teachers and publishers.