Rereading favorite stories

-->

Children often request that favorite stories be read aloud.  This common practice of rereading favorite stories to children has attracted the attention of many scholars.  Researchers have questioned whether lasting cognitive and affective benefits result from repeated readings of the same story.  Investigators have sought to answer this question by studying the responses of children who have had the opportunity to hear repeated readings of the same story. 

• Children's comments and questions increase and become more interpretive and evaluative when they have listened to repeated readings, 
• children's discussed more aspects of the text and in greater depth.
• children elaborated more often and interpreted issues in the story
• children internalized the interaction that occurred between parent and child.  The child gradually took over conducting the reading
• the familiarity that comes with repeated readings enables children to reenact stories, modeling the parent or attempt to read stories on their own using illustrations and the experiences to reenact 
• the familiarity gained through the rereadings provides children with frameworks of background information that enable them to deal with the text on a variety of levels. 

p. 571-2

Morrow L., & Gambrell, L. (2000). Literature-Based Reading Instruction. In M.L. Kamil, P.B. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: Volume III (pp. 563-586). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.