When ebooks first evolved into the digital editions that readers consume today, children were often left out of the mix. Parents weren’t eager to put expensive devices into the hands of young readers, and a cycle ensued as publishers didn’t create an abundance of content in the children’s publishing sphere. Now that the original stigma against children’s ebooks is dissolving, parents and educators are looking at new ways that children can best utilize literacy materials, including audiobooks.
While children’s publishing has long used read-alongs, those colorful story books that came with an accompanying cassette or CD, a new push for children to enhance their literacy and vocabulary skills through strictly audiobook stands to help readers make strides in fluency, comprehension, and thematic recognition.
A post by children’s publisher Scholastic outlines some of the benefits to children’s audiobooks, most notably perhaps being the erased stigma of a student reader having to use lower-level texts; once a student is listening to an audiobook, his peers have no way of knowing what he’s reading and if that book is far easier than books read by the rest of the class. Whereas as a struggling reader might have shunned all efforts at reading due to having to demonstrate his lack of ability for his classmates, now he’s encouraged to read under the anonymity provided by audiobooks.
For the complete post by Scholastic on the benefits of audiobook use by children, click HERE.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.