The growing popularity of e-books and the adoption of specialized e-book reading devices are documented in a series of new nationally representative surveys by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project that look at the public's general reading habits, their consumption of print books, e-books and audiobooks, and their attitudes…

Librarians love books. They love the feel, the smell, and the look of the page. However, physical volumes have kept the author from reaching the ideas and stories that he wants. An impenetrable pile of pages in linear order, books are difficult to decode, search, and rearrange, and one of the worst information management systems he has…

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced its 2009 annual lists of Fabulous Films for Young Adults and Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults ages 12 to 18. This article presents the titles that were released in January 2009 during the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver,…

Audiobooks are excellent tools to help students build literacy skills as well as improve listening, writing, and vocabulary competencies. In many shared or independent reading situations, audiobooks offer support to reluctant and struggling readers, special-needs students, and English-language learners. They are also embraced by voracious readers.…

First offered to public libraries in 2004, downloadable audiobooks have grown by leaps and bounds. According to the Audio Publishers Association, their sales today account for 21% of the spoken-word audio market. It hasn't been easy, however. WMA. DRM. MP3. AAC. File extensions small on letters but very big on consequences for librarians,…

The Family Backpack Project provided 249 low-income, prekindergarten children and their families with opportunities to read and listen to audio recordings of 3 sets of books in their homes. Families received English or dual-language texts (English plus Spanish, Arabic, Kurdish, or Somali) matched to their home languages. Children and their…

Audiobooks have been around for years in various formats, like cassette tapes and CDs. This article describes a new type of audiobook on the market which is generating an interest in "reading." The device, called Playaway, is the size of a MP3 player and comes with a lanyard and ear buds. Buttons on the back of the player control the…

Vocabulary knowledge is key to comprehension and expression. For students in the intermediate grades, the need for breadth and depth of vocabulary accelerates as they encounter more challenging academic texts in print and on the Internet. Drawing on research-based principles of vocabulary instruction and multimedia learning, this article presents…

This paper reports an extended analysis of the study reported in [Wood, C. (2005). "Beginning readers' use of 'talking books' software can affect their reading strategies." "Journal of Research in Reading, 28," 170-182.], in which five and six-year-old children received either six sessions using specially designed talking books or six sessions of…

The objective of the present research study was to understand what benefits the use of audiobooks (both school-books and books of various genres, recorded on digital media) could bring to preadolescents and adolescents with developmental dyslexia. Two groups, each consisting of 20 adolescents, were compared. The experimental group used the…

In July 2008, over 14,000 public libraries throughout the U.S. received, free of charge, a set of fourteen Audio Guides introducing them to The Big Read. Since 2007, when the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, in partnership with Arts Midwest, debuted The Big Read, the program has awarded grants to…

Members of the Kunibidji community are the traditional owners of the lands and seas around Maningrida, a remote community in Northern Australia. Most of the 200 members of the Kunibidji Community speak Ndjebbana as their first language. This study reports on the complexities of transforming technology to provide Kunibidji children with access to…

This article features two library media specialists who discovered a way to motivate high school students to read. When most people go to the movies, the "coming attractions" or movie trailers are as anticipated as the popcorn! This Americana movie tradition hooks people again and again on what they will come back to see next. So, it's no surprise…

This article highlights significant research about what below grade-level reading means in middle school classrooms and suggests a tested approach to improve reading comprehension levels significantly by using audio books. The use of these audio books can improve reading and academic performance for both English language learners (ELLs) and for…

Most children seem to love computers, and there has been much speculation and research about how educators might harness this interest to facilitate literacy learning. A growing body of research indicates that electronic talking books (ETBs) can help children learn to read and encourage them to read, so we decided to investigate what would happen…