Library Trends

This article examines children's responses to self-selected books in a digital library and begins to identify patterns in those responses. As part of a larger longitudinal study, the study presented here is an analysis of 241 book response forms submitted by 12 children from 4 countries: Germany, Honduras, New Zealand, and the United States. The children described most of the books they read as being funny or happy and generally rated them with four or five stars (out of five stars). The most commonly identified types of responses were those expressing like or dislike, summarizing the text, or explaining how the book made the child feel. Two factors were identified that influenced response patterns from the study sites: the data collection instrument and adult mediation. This research has implications for library program development related to recreational reading and for changes in the procedures for data collection in this area of research.