Factors Influencing Parents' Preferences and Parents' Perceptions of Child Preferences of Picturebooks

Abstract

This study examined factors influencing parents' preferences and their perceptions of their children's preferences for picturebooks. First, a content analysis was conducted on a set of picturebooks (N = 87) drawn from the sample described in Wagner (2013); Then, parents (N = 149) rated the books and several content properties were examined for their ability to predict parents' preferences and their perception of their children's preferences. The initial content analysis found correlated clusters of disparate measures of complexity (linguistic, cognitive, narrative) and identified a distinctive sub-genre of modern books featuring female protagonists. The experimental preference analysis found that parents' own preferences were most influenced by the books' age and status; parents' perceptions of their children's preferences were influenced by gender, with parents perceiving their sons (but not daughters) as dis-preferring books with female protagnoists. In addition, influences of the child's reading ability and the linguistic complexity of the book on preferences suggested a sensitivity to the cultural practice of joint book-reading.

What might books be teaching young children about gender?

“…Our findings suggest that books vary appreciably along the dimension of gender in terms of both their content and characters. The gender distribution of characters we observe is comparable to that reported previously in a smaller sample of books (Wagner, 2017).…”

“…The main character(s) were classified as either female, male, mixed, or indeterminate (Wagner, 2017). If there was more than one primary character, and their gender composition was heterogeneous, that group was classified as mixed.…”

Does book genre matter? Boys' and girls' word learning from narrative and informational books in the preschool years

“…Yet including informational books in home settings may be challenging as a number of studies revealed that there is a perception among children and adults that boys prefer informational books (Chapman et al, ; Wagner, ). Because parents try to select books that interest their children (Tekin & Tekin, ), if they perceive informational books as being something their boys will like, they are more likely to expose them to this type of book.…”

“…Despite the fact that parents are generally the ones who purchase books for their children or select books to borrow from the library, a surprisingly small number of studies have examined parents' genre preferences when making these selections (Wagner, ). Although Anderson et al () found that parents selected informational books nearly as often as narratives, in the few other studies that we found, parents reported a clear preference for storybooks over other genres (Robertson & Reese, ; Saracho & Spodek, ).…”

“…Studies on the selection of books for shared reading have found that adults and children take a number of factors into consideration, such as the aesthetic aspects of books like the illustrations (Anderson, Anderson, Shapiro, & Lynch, ; Bergman Deitcher, Aram, & Adar, ; Danko‐McGhee & Slutsky, ; Reuter, ), the book's familiarity (Robinson, Larsen, Haupt, & Mohlman, ) and self‐identity (including gender, ethnicity and reading level) (Bang‐Jensen, ; McGeown, , Wagner, ). Parents were found to select books that interested them in their own childhoods (Švab & Žumer, ) or that they think will interest their children (Tekin & Tekin, ).…”