Parents ask this, often a little guiltily: if a story is read aloud by a recording instead of by me, does it still count? The honest answer is that listening and reading together are different things that do overlapping jobs, and a family that does both is better off than one that does either alone.

What listening does

A child who listens to a story is doing most of what a child who is read to does: hearing new words in full sentences, following a shape from beginning to end, holding characters and places in their head. Listening comprehension runs ahead of reading ability for years — a six-year-old can follow a story far richer than anything they can read — and it is listening that builds the vocabulary reading will later draw on.

A narrated story also does something a tired parent cannot always do: it reads at the same slow, even pace every night, and it does not skip pages.

What it does not do

A recording does not notice when a child is confused, does not answer a question, and does not know it is the third time this week. It does not show a child that the marks on the page are the words being said. And it is not a parent sitting close. Those are the parts of reading together that a recording cannot replace, and they are the parts worth keeping.

Using both

The easy version: sit with the story. Let the narration read; you stay, look at the pictures together, pause it when a question comes. Every story here shows its words on the page as they are spoken, so a child who is starting to read can follow along with a finger — which is, quietly, how a lot of children work out that reading and listening are the same thing.

The end of each story asks one question. Answer it together. That minute of talking is the part of the bedtime story that no recording provides, and it is the part children remember.

A simple shape for the week

Families who make this work rarely do the same thing every night. A shape that holds up: some nights you read, from a book or from the page on the screen, in your own voice, at your own pace. Some nights the story reads itself and you sit with it, which is the version for the evenings when you have nothing left. And one night the child chooses everything — the story, the language, who reads. The point is that the parent's voice and the recorded voice are both normal, and neither is a treat or a punishment.

One thing to keep constant whichever voice is reading: the end. The question, the goodnight, the light. A child does not mind who read the story nearly as much as they mind how it ended.

For children learning a second language

Listening is where a second language starts, and a story a child already loves is the best possible thing to hear in a new one. The stories here can be read and narrated in thirteen languages; the words on the page change with the voice.