Playful literacies in early childhood: Toddlers’ embodied engagements with interactive board books in kindergarten

This article examines how toddlers aged one to three engage with interactive board books as part of playful and embodied literacy practices in everyday early childhood education contexts. While shared reading with young children has been widely studied, less attention has been directed towards how toddlers participate in literacy events through bodily and sensory interaction with books. Drawing on a small-scale ethnographic study conducted in a Norwegian kindergarten, the article explores shared reading encounters involving interactive board books featuring tactile and sensory elements such as textures, flaps, and finger puppets. The empirical material consists of participant observations, field notes, and interviews with early childhood educators collected over a seven-week period. Through vignette-based analysis, the study demonstrates how toddlers engage with books through movement, touch, imitation, repetition, and shared attention rather than through linear progression through verbal text. Interactive book features function as material anchors that organise participation and sustain engagement, enabling children to explore books through sensory and affective interaction. The findings further show how educators support these literacy events through attuned participation, adjusting tempo and following children’s initiatives rather than directing the activity. By foregrounding toddlers’ embodied encounters with interactive books, the study extends the concept of playful literacies to children under the age of three and highlights the role of materiality and embodiment in early literacy participation.