The science behind our books

In short

Dialogic reading is a way of sharing a book where the adult asks little questions, waits, and builds on the child's answers instead of reading straight through. The research goes back to Grover Whitehurst's studies in the 1980s. It shows that this style of reading reliably gets parents and children talking more, and meta-analyses find meaningful vocabulary gains in young children. The effect is largest between ages two and three.

We want to say this carefully. Shared reading supports language and connection, but no book makes a child "smarter", and we will never claim that. What the research keeps showing is that the conversation matters. So our books are designed to start one.

How it shapes every Tella Terra page

• One little question on every page. Studies that printed prompts directly inside books found families talked up to three times as much, and kept the habit even with other books. Ours follow the CROWD question types (Completion, Recall, Open-ended, Wh-, Distancing).
• A repeating line your child can join. Gentle repetition lets toddlers anticipate, complete, and finally "read" the line themselves. It is the Completion prompt in its most natural form.
• The PEER guide for grown-ups. At the back of every book you will find the four steps from the original dialogic-reading method: Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, Repeat.
• True-to-life pictures. Lifelike animals and children give you and your toddler more to point at, name, and connect to your own life (the Distancing prompt).
• A words-we-met page. A point-and-say recap of the story's words, in the language of your edition.

Why the pictures look lifelike

Our animals are made as lifelike pictures rather than cartoons, and that is a deliberate, research-led choice. Developmental researchers call it iconicity: how closely a picture resembles the real thing it stands for. For the youngest children, the more lifelike the picture, the more easily they connect it to the real world.

In one study, toddlers learned and copied a new action from a book illustrated with realistic photographs, but struggled when the very same steps were drawn as simpler cartoons. In another, 15-month-olds carried a new word from a picture to the real object when the picture was realistic, but not when it was a cartoon. Reviews of this work reach the same conclusion: for toddlers, the learning job of a picture book is best served by realistic illustration.

So our lifelike pages are not only for beauty. They help each new word land on the real creature it names, which is exactly what a first library of words is for. On honesty: our pictures are illustrations crafted to look true to life, not photographs taken with a camera.

The research

• Whitehurst, G. et al. The original dialogic reading studies and the PEER/CROWD method. Overview: Dialogic Reading: An Effective Way to Read Aloud with Young Children (Reading Rockets)
• Mol, S., Bus, A., de Jong, M. & Smeets, D. (2008). Added Value of Dialogic Parent-Child Book Readings: A Meta-Analysis. Early Education & Development. A vocabulary effect of d≈0.42 across 16 studies, strongest for two-to-three-year-olds.
• Dowdall, N. et al. (2020). Shared Picture Book Reading Interventions for Child Language Development. Child Development. Nineteen randomized trials; a large effect on caregivers' book-sharing skill (d≈1.01) and a moderate one on expressive language (d≈0.41).
• Vally, Z., Murray, L., Tomlinson, M. & Cooper, P. (2015). Dialogic book-sharing with 14-to-16-month-olds improved expressive and receptive language and attention in a randomized trial (summarized in Dowdall et al., above).
• Noble, C. et al. (2019). The impact of shared book reading on children's language skills: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review. The field's honest caveat: effects shrink when compared with active control groups. Reading together helps, but it is not magic.
• Troseth, G., Strouse, G. et al. (2020-2022). Digital modeling of dialogic questioning promotes positive parenting during shared reading. Families reading a book with built-in dialogic prompts talked more than three times as much, and the style carried over to other books.
• Strouse, G., Troseth, G. & Stuckelman, Z. (2023). Page and screen: Storybook features that promote parent-child talk. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. Built-in conversation prompts increased both the quantity and the quality of parent-child talk, in print as well as on screen.
• de Koning, B. et al. (2020). Inferencing questions embedded in a picture book. First Language. Scripted questions in the book led parents and children to make several times more inferences while reading.
• Garbe, P. et al. (2023). Reach Out and Read: 100,656-family study. Academic Pediatrics. Guidance plus books at pediatric checkups is associated with more daily reading and more dialogic-style behaviour at home.
• Simcock, G. & DeLoache, J. (2006). Get the picture? The effects of iconicity on toddlers' reenactment from picture books. Developmental Psychology. Toddlers reenacted a sequence far more readily from realistic photographs than from cartoonish drawings. Plain-language summary: Toddlers find photos easier to learn from than drawings (BPS Research Digest).
• Ganea, P., Pickard, M. & DeLoache, J. (2008). Transfer between Picture Books and the Real World by Very Young Children. Journal of Cognition and Development. Realistic pictures helped very young children map a new word onto the real object; cartoons did not.
• Simcock, G. & DeLoache, J. (2008). The Effect of Repetition on Infants' Imitation From Picture Books Varying in Iconicity. Infancy. More realistic illustrations made it easier for infants to imitate what they had seen.
• (2018). The Role of Book Features in Young Children's Transfer of Information from Picture Books to Real-World Contexts. Frontiers in Psychology. A review of how realism and other book features support a toddler's learning from a page.