Reading Picture Books with Infants and Toddlers

Posted on: August 3, 2023

Reading picture books with infants and toddlers: Learning through language

Honorary Associate Professor Jane Torr

School of Education

Macquarie University NSW

Australia

Many mothers begin reading to their baby early in life. This seemingly simple activity not only provides an enjoyable experience,  it also at the same time builds a pathway to future success in learning to read after school entry. Several large-scale studies have attested to the association between reading experience in infancy and future language and literacy knowledge and skills. Even when other influential factors such as the home literacy environment and socioeconomic positioning are controlled for, reading books is uniquely related to future language and literacy (1). Indeed, such is the educational significance of this practice, that governments around the world give new parents a picture book and advice on how to support their baby’s literacy learning.

Learning language and learning through language in infancy

So what is it about picture book reading with infants that has such power to influence their future lives? We can gain insight into the developmental significance of reading picture books with infants by drawing on a theory of language developed by linguist Michael Halliday (2). This theory, referred to as systemic functional linguistic theory, sees language as a resource for making meaning. Language enables speakers to represent their experience of the world (the ideational function) and to interact with other speakers (the interpersonal function). A third function of language (the textual function) serves to create cohesion between one piece of language and another. This theory of language further suggests that, when infants learn language, they are at the same time acquiring a means of learning about the world more generally.

Towards the end of their first year of life, infants begin to interact with familiar others by producing “acts of meaning”; that is, by systematically combining an expression (a sound or gesture) with a particular meaning; for example, to request an object they can see (toy, food), or to express their feelings of closeness or curiosity.  During their second year, infants begin to adopt the words of their wider speech community, and they use these early words to serve one of two functions; either to gain objects and direct the actions of others, or to learn about the world. It is this latter function of language that is most fully stimulated and enriched during picture book reading.

The language learning opportunities of shared reading

Let us now look more closely at the language learning opportunities uniquely afforded by shared reading; that is,  the book-focused interactions between an adult and child. Most research on shared reading has been undertaken with mothers reading with their own child.  During shared reading, each participant – the mother, the child, and the picture book – contributes to the complex processes of making meaning from visual and verbal modes of representation.

The mother plays a critical pedagogical role during shared reading. She reads the printed text aloud, and then encourages the infant to participate by drawing their attention to some feature of the illustration (look, there’s a puppy), by making a connection between the illustration and the child’s life (it looks like our puppy), and by encouraging the child’s engagement by asking questions (do you like that puppy, what does the puppy say). Such book-focused interactions support language development in multiple ways. First, they expose the infant to the distinctive cadences of written language, read aloud in the familiar voice of the mother, and juxtaposed with the everyday patterns of her speech in the talk surrounding the picture book. Linguistic theory explains that spoken and written language are different modes of meaning-making, which differ grammatically and fulfil different functions in human communication. Written language contains proportionally more content words than spoken language.  Indeed, studies of the printed text in picture books reveal that they contain more unusual words and structures compared with those in the speech addressed to infants in all other contexts such as meals, bath-time and play (3).

Furthermore, the pictures in picture books, combined with the mother’s explanatory talk, facilitate the development of children’s knowledge about words and their meaning. Both the quantity and the qualities of the speech addressed to infants relates to their future language development, which in turn relates to their literacy development, because the size and depth of a child’s vocabulary on school entry is associated with their comprehension of written text. In other words, a child’s vocabulary serves as a proxy for their general knowledge about the world.

The language in many picture books resonates with the oral language registers that mothers address to their infants. So-called “infant-addressed speech” is characterised by higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, alliteration and repetition. Like lullabies and nursery rhymes, many picture books contain such highly patterned language.  These patterns draw infants’ attention to the sounds that make up words and sentences. There is therefore a connection between the prosodies used by mothers of infants in general, and the printed text in many picture books for this age group.  

Picture books thus play a unique role in the lives of infants. Like toys, picture books are material objects that can be touched, patted, grabbed, and even chewed on. But unlike toys, picture books are also semiotic objects, that express meaning symbolically through the interaction between words and pictures. When an infant names an entity in a picture book, they are engaged in an act of interpretation. Even the most realistic pictures do not resemble the actual real-life objects they depict.

What are the key messages in your book?

The importance of shared reading with infants and toddlers cannot be overstated. While much attention in the media focuses on teaching reading in the primary school, the story really begins much earlier. Literacy development really does begin at birth, and every child has the right to learn to read. As increasing numbers of infants and toddlers attend Early Childhood Education and Care services, professional early childhood teachers need to be recognised for their vital role in the educational system, and remunerated accordingly, as they provide the foundations upon which future successful reading is built.  

References

1 Demire-Lira, O. E., Applebaum, L. R., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Levine, S.C. (2019). Parents’ early book reading to children: Relation to children’s later language and literacy outcomes controlling for other parent language input. Developmental Science, 22(3), e12764. doi: 10.1111/desc.12764

2 Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed.). Edward Arnold.

3 Massaro, D. W. (2015). Two different communication genres and implications for vocabulary development and learning to read. Journal of Literacy Research, 47(4), 505-527. Doi:10.1177/1086296X15627528