Project

TinkRBook: Reinventing the Reading Primer

Groups

TinkRBook is a storytelling system that introduces a new concept of reading, called textual tinkerability. Textual tinkerability uses storytelling gestures to expose the text-concept relationships within a scene. Tinkerability prompts readers to become more physically active and expressive as they explore concepts in reading together. TinkRBooks are interactive storybooks that prompt interactivity in a subtle way, enhancing communication between parents and children during shared picture-book reading. TinkRBooks encourage positive reading behaviors in emergent literacy: parents act out the story to control the words onscreen, demonstrating print referencing and dialogic questioning techniques. Young children actively explore the abstract relationship between printed words and their meanings, even before this relationship is properly understood. By making story elements alterable within a narrative, readers can learn to read by playing with how word choices impact the storytelling experience. Recently, this research has been applied in developing countries.