The Impact of shared book reading on children and their Families: insights from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

<p dir="ltr">This thesis offers new insights into the impact of shared book reading on children and their families across five chapters. It investigates how shared book reading is associated with a child’s development in general, and how participation in a specific book gifting program - Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library - is associated with the home literacy environment, reading attitudes and interactions, and children’s emerging literacy skills.</p><p dir="ltr">Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to shared book reading, the Imagination Library, along with the reasoning and theory that guide this thesis.</p><p dir="ltr">Chapter 2 provides a systematic review with meta-analyses of the quantitative evidence for an association between shared book reading and child development outcomes. The results suggest that shared book reading is moderately and significantly associated with various developmental outcomes, particularly spoken language skills. The findings also reveal the complexities of measuring shared book reading and make recommendations for future research.</p><p dir="ltr">Chapter 3 uses both quantitative and qualitative data to investigate the potential impact of the Imagination Library on families across an entire local government area in Australia (Tamworth). Analyses of the data indicated that children in the program were read to more often, for longer durations, and had more books in the home than the average Australian child. Further, early reading routines were established and maintained that are associated with a child’s emerging literacy skills. This chapter also explores qualitative findings which demonstrate the impact of the program across families and the greater community.</p><p dir="ltr">Chapter 4 expands its focus to the potential impact of the Imagination Library in five countries around the world: the United States of America (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland, Canada, and Australia. Analyses of quantitative data within and between countries suggest that children in the program are more likely to be read to, have more positive attitudes toward and interactions during shared book reading, and demonstrate more emerging literacy skills than children not in the program. In addition, caregivers are more likely to demonstrate positive attitudes toward and interactions during shared book reading than caregivers who are not in the program.</p><p dir="ltr">Finally, Chapter 5 synthesises the key insights from the previous chapters and discusses the challenges across the research. This chapter makes recommendations for how future research can further explore the impacts of shared book reading in general, and the Imagination Library more specifically as well as demonstrating the importance of book-gifting from birth.</p>