Reading to Children, Reading with Children: Parents’ Interactional Practices Fostering Children’s Participation in Shared Book-Reading at Home

Research has long demonstrated the positive effects of parent-child shared book-reading on children’s development. However, despite their pedagogical relevance, parent-child shared reading activities remain underexplored as real-life, interactive achievements. Applying Conversation Analysis to a corpus of 13 video-recorded parent-child shared-reading sessions collected in three Italian households, this exploratory study analyzes how shared book-reading is carried out in everyday family life. Through a selection of case studies, it illustrates three practices whereby parents prompt their pre-school children’s participation in shared book-reading. The article offers insights to enhance parents’ awareness about narrative interactions with their children and aims to improve shared reading practices.