July 17, 2006
The cover DOES matter!!
This past spring I attended the ACEI Conference in San Antonio, TX. I attended a workshop called, "The Role of Aesthetic Preference in Children's Literacy Experiences." The presenter was Mr. Ruslan Slutsky from Ohio. The description in the program said... "We will focus on criteria children take into account when selecting books to read."
Their question of inquiry: Do children ages 2 - 6 show aesthetic preferences when selecting books? Does the artistic category of the COVER (abstract, realistic, colorful, black & white) influence whether or not the children will go deeper and pick it up to read it?
What they did: The activity took place at a Children's Museum in Ohio. Slutsky and colleagues put all the books out on the table (3 books from each of the four categories) children were invited to pick one they liked. Then they were asked if they wanted to read it. Children were asked also why they did or did not like certain books.
The figures below show the percentage of children who chose the books of that cover style. At summer session we will be going into this in more detail - but I was so excited about this that I just had to get it on the website too!
AGE ABSTRACT REAL COLOR B/W
2 YEAR OLDS 23% 41% 35% < 1%
3 YEAR OLDS 0% 56% 0% 44%
4 YEAR OLDS 21% 29% 21% 29%
5 YEAR OLDS 20% 40% 30% 10%
6 YEAR OLDS 18% 40% < 1% 41%
BOYS ONLY ABSTRACT REAL COLOR B/W
2 YEAR OLD 14% 29% 43% 14%
3 YEAR OLD 0% 50% 0% 50%
4 YEAR OLD 18% 18% 28% 36%
5 YEAR OLD 20% 10% 60% 10%
6 YEAR OLD 11% 22% 11% 56%
GIRLS ONLY ABSTRACT REAL COLOR B/W
2 YEAR OLD 33% 50% 17% 0%
3 YEAR OLD 0% 57% 0% 43%
4 YEAR OLD 33% 67% 0% 0%
5 YEAR OLD 20% 70% 0% 10%
6 YEAR OLD 25% 50% 0% 25%
Note: There were 73 children in each age group. 39 boys in each group and 34 girls. A total of 438 children participated in the activity. Slutsky and colleagues are in the process of duplicating the study in other regions and geographical areas to see if these initial results can be generalized across the board. For now it serves as interesting information for us as we select books for our classrooms!
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