Emergent literacy (EL) enhancement has been the goal of numerous educational programs for years, especially for children from low socioeconomic statuses (LSES) (Snow, 1994; Whitehurst, Zevebergen, Crone, Schultz, Velting, & Fischel, 1999). During the past decade, technology software, including electronic books (e-books), have become incorporated within this agenda. One of the common activities in children's education in the Western world in mainstream families is that adults read storybooks to children constantly from a very young age (DeBruin-Parecki, 1999). Studies of the last 4 decades have shown how powerful this activity is, especially for the child's oral language, with less clear results regarding emergent or early literacy (Stahl, 2003; van Kleeck, 2003; Whitehurst et al., 1999). The proposed study examined how e-books compare with traditional printed books in the support of LSES children's EL with and without adult assistance.
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