Teaching people to read, especially children, fosters greater literacy and knowledge among the general populous. Getting children to read, unfortunately, can be a laborious task. Many reading materials are unattractive to the eye and do not foster imagination among the potential reader. The less than appealing designs of reading materials often result in an apathetic reader or avoidance of reading altogether.
To encourage reading, some reading materials have attractive and/or fanciful color designs or pictures to entice the reader. Often, however, these materials are located only on the exterior cover of the materials causing the reader to lose interest on the interior pages. Reading materials with pictures or design work on the interior pages are common but have inherent problems in themselves. These problems include expensive printing costs, and thick volume size due to the increased number of pages due to the artwork.
Common reading materials also have another significant drawback. For the material to be seen, a proper viewing perspective must be maintained by the reader (i.e. the book must be in front of the reader.) A young child must often crowd next to an adult to view the text and/or artwork in the book. If multiple children are present, viewing can become even more restrained as each child tries to obtain a proper perspective of the book. The reader must often stop and show the pages to the children, slowing the pace of the story, and affecting interest in the work for all involved. In large families or in classroom situations, the problems presented are self-evident.
Children retelling a previously read story is also a significant part of the reading experience. The retelling of the story by the child fosters memory recall and imagination. If a child does not have visual cues upon which to initiate successive steps in the story, the child may not want or be able to retell the story. Reading materials without visual prompts, therefore, lack a critical feature in the learning process.
It is therefore desired to have reading materials which do not have these drawbacks and which encourage reading, especially among younger people.