The Primary English Encyclopedia: The Heart of the Curriculum, Third Edition
Living books (as resources for early reading)
See also CD, CD-ROM, eBooks, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and English
Living books are texts on CD mainly used to support the initial teaching of reading. Some of the best-known living books for children from about ages four to six are Green Eggs and Ham, Sheila Rae, the Brave and The Tortoise and the Hare published by Broderbund. They encourage the development of conventional reading skills and abilities as the reader moves from one page to the next in a linear way. But as there are ‘hotspots’ which can be activated on the screen, living books can help young children use their understanding of the ways in which printed texts work to grasp the non-linear structure of electronic texts. This prepares them for the greater demands of information CD-ROMs and websites (O’Sul-livan, 2005). Some of the characteristics of living books which help young readers include:
• the motivating presence of animations and sounds
• the facility (in some) of enabling readers to click on an individual word to hear it read aloud, helping the matching of sound and written word
• the opportunities for interaction – for example, discussion and making their own stories
• the facility of highlighting text to heighten print awareness – for example, one might highlight all the adjectives in a passage
• encouragement to make their own decisions to revisit particular pages
• opportunities to become familiar with texts on screen – features like icons and ‘hotspots’.
The well-contextualised visual and audio support makes the best living books helpful to young learners just beginning to learn English. Traditional tales with a strong rhythmic text like those from Kingscourt ‘Inside Stories’ on CD help as well.
Teachers on courses at the Centre for Literacy in Education have observed that some children, and particularly boys, seem more likely to engage with print texts if their interest has first been caught by experience of screen books. The screen books seem to help heighten children’s early print awareness (O’Sullivan, 2005).
But there are some criticisms of living books, or at least those available at present, to bear in mind. Some reviewers find many living books lack the quality of language and story found in the best print books. Let us hope this will be rectified in the future by the production of new and better versions. Then there are criticisms to do with how far a particular living book stimulates interaction and discussion or maybe stimulates creativity – for example by inviting the reader to tell or write their own ending to the story. Sometimes it is difficult for young readers to become truly involved in the events of the story because there are so many chances to click on animations. This risks interrupting the rhythm of the child’s reading of the central story. Of considerable help in choosing living books of quality is the TEEM website which offers reviews of both software and websites.
Cinderella; The Billy Goats Gruff and The Gingerbread Man Inside Stories Kingscourt/McGraw-Hill. http://www.snaithprimary.eril.net/rindex.htm
Green Eggs and Ham; The Tortoise and the Hare; Sheila Rae, the Brave, Broderbund Living Books, available from www.taglearning.com, www.amazon.co.uk
O’Sullivan, Olivia (2005) ‘ICT and early literacy’ in Books for Keeps, September.
TEEM (Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia) http://www.teem.org.uk/
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