Children Reading for Pleasure in the Digital Age

Natalia Kucirkova is Professor of Reading at the Open University, UK, and Professor of Early Childhood at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Her research concerns innovative ways of supporting children’s book reading, digital literacy, and exploring the role of personalisation in the early years. She co-edits the Bloomsbury Book Series ′Children’s Reading and Writing on Screen′ and the journal Literacy published by Wiley. Natalia’s research takes place collaboratively across academia, commercial and third sectors. She is author of ′Digital Personalization in Early Childhood′ (Bloomsbury) and ′How and Why to Read and Create Children′s Digital Books′ (UCL Press) and currently blogs for Huffington Post and Psychology Today.Teresa Cremin is Professor of Education (Literacy) at The Open University, UK.  An ex-teacher and teacher educator, her research focuses on teachers’ literate identities and practices, children’s volitional reading and writing and creative pedagogies. A Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the RSA and the English Association, Teresa co-edits the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity.  Recent edited /authored books include ‘Writer Identity and the Teaching and Learning of Writing’; ‘Storytelling in Early Childhood’; ‘Researching Literacy Lives’ and ‘Building Communities of Engaged Readers’ (Routledge). Teresa leads a professional user-community website based on her research into volitional reading. https://researchrichpedagogies.org/research/reading-for-pleasure

‘ … the authors deftly avoid presenting the text as a print versus digital books divide, and instead present a multitude of ways of reading, showing how they can be complementary and further engage and motivate children to read. This book is a timely reminder that we no longer face the issue of how much children should read, as it is all too easy to widen one’s repertoire of books in this age of digital libraries. The more imperative matter at hand is the need to consider how digital texts should be considered alongside print texts as resources for cultivating RfP.’

• List of FiguresChapter One: Mapping the terrainChapter Two: Reading for pleasure in the digital eraChapter Three: The personal and the affectiveChapter Four: The personal entangledChapter Five: Reading for pleasure pedagogyChapter Six: Reciprocal reading communitiesChapter Seven: Readers’ identitiesChapter Eight: Documenting volitional readingChapter Nine: Revisiting the journeyReferences