KIDS LIKE BOOKS EXPLAINING HOW THE WORLD WORKS

A study from Vanderbilt University has found that children prefer storybooks containing information explaining how and why the world works the way it does. From the hard-to-answer question of, “Where do babies come from?” to more innocuous inquiries like asking how electricity or WiFi work, most children want to know the answers. The researchers conducted an experiment involving 48 young children, 3-4 years old. An adult volunteer read each child two different stories, one about why animals behave and look the way they do, and another one that just described animals’ features and behaviors. When the children were specifically asked which book they preferred, most choose the book loaded with causal information.
* Time to pull that boring Stephen Hawking book “A Brief History of Time” off the shelf.
* If only there was a TV series called, oh, I don’t know, “How It’s Made” or “How Stuff Works”.
* Would a 3-year-old rather read about The Very Hungry Caterpillar, or The Digestive System Of The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
* How about that Dr. Seuss book, “One Fish, Two Fish, Overfish, No Fish.”
* If your kid really wants to see how the world works, stick ’em in front of a cable news channel for a couple of hours.
* I want to know how this works: How can people pull a salary from Vanderbilt University reading stories to 48 3-year-olds and calling it a research study?