helping them develop into more active readers.

The team organized a "book-night party" - a typical stuffed animal sleepover program - for 42 preschool children. The researchers looked at the children's beh-avior that day, after three days and after one month, to determine the effect and how long it lasts. Before the sleepover the children did not spend time looking at the books in their play area at preschool. Immediately after the sleepover, the number of children who read to the stuffed animals was significantly higher than the number who did not, but after three days the effect had worn off.

The researchers also tested an approach for sustaining the effect: they reminded the children of the sleepover a month later, by hiding the stuffed animals and showing them thephotos again the next day. This simple method led to a significant increase in the number of children reading to their stuffed animals.

"The photographs captured the children's imagination - many children believed the stuffed animals really found the books," said Dr. Okazaki. "But not every child who participated in the program began reading to the stuffed animals. There were individual differences in the results of this program. Because early childhood is the period when children begin to distinguish between fantasy and reality, their tendency to fantasize would be one factor that determines the effect of the stuffed animal sleepover."

The article appears in Heliyon (February 2016), published by Elsevier.

Heliyon is an online only, fully open access journal from Elsevier publishing quality original research across all disciplines. All Heliyon papers