As the new school year begins, all the children who participated in the KIT study have now moved on to elementary school. We extend our wishes for a bountiful harvest and an enjoyable learning experience in this exciting new phase of education. This edition covers several interesting topics, including a brief overview of the Etude Longitudinale Française depuis l'Enfance (ELFE), various KIT findings related to shared reading, a special feature on Prof. Shuobin Su from the National Taiwan University Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature, and a book review of La Tête Ailleurs. This storybook, written by André Bouchard and illustrated by Quentin Blake, tells the tale of a father who, after losing his head, becomes incredibly easygoing and obedient, doing whatever he's asked without overthinking things.

Etude Longitudinale Française depuis l'Enfance (ELFE)
Etude Longitudinale Française depuis l'Enfance (ELFE), also known as the French Longitudinal Study since Childhood, is a collaborative effort involving the French National Institute for Demographic Studies, the National Institute for Health and Medical Research, and other government agencies. With randomly selected 344 maternity hospitals in France for sample recruitment, ELFE began tracking 18,000 infants born in France in 2011, and the sample has now reached the age of 10. The project has collected data over ten waves and will continue to follow these children into adolescence and adulthood, with a total tracking period of 20 years. ELFE originated from the consolidation of two national projects and initially aimed to focus on the health and socialization processes of individual growth. Over the past decade, the project has revealed a range of findings. These include recommendations such as advising pregnant women to avoid using pesticides in their homes to prevent abnormalities in reproductive organs of male infants, suggesting that fathers of newborns take paternity leave for long-term benefits in paternal involvement and co-parenting, and imposing limitations on the use of electronic devices for children aged 2 to 3 to prevent negative impacts on their sleep, behavior, and early learning abilities, among other things. In October 2018, the Department of Studies, Foresight, Statistics, and Documentation of the French Ministry of Culture released a report regarding parent-child language interaction and early child language development based on data collected from 11,035 parent participants of the ELFE project. The report, titled “Early language socialization: the ELFE survey into the role of language interaction with parents during a child's first 365 days,” examined the frequency with which fathers and mothers read to their children, categorizing it as “never,” “occasionally,” or “frequently.” It found that when children were one-year-old, the proportion of fathers who had never read to their children (40%) is nearly twice as high as that of mothers (21%). The report is available at https://shorturl.at/wHL25, and readers interested in ELFE can visit its official website at https://www.elfe-france.fr/en/

Highlight of KIT Findings
The importance of parent-child shared reading for many aspects of children's development has long been proved by researchers. Studies using the KIT data also indicate the positive impact of parent-child shared reading at home on children's language, cognition, social-emotional, and overall development.

To explore how parent-child shared reading has been practiced in Taiwan, we analyze the parent questionnaires filled out by fathers or mothers for children in KIT's 3-month age group at 1, 2, and 3 years old. The frequency of "reading to the child each week" by fathers and mothers at different ages is examined to see how often they have engaged in this activity. The question offers seven frequency options, ranging from "none, I haven’t started" to "less than once a week," "1-3 times a week," and up to "10-12 times a week" or "over 13 times per week." Here is the summary of the results:

1. As children grew older, both fathers and mothers gradually increased the frequency of shared reading each week. When children were 1 year old, 61% of fathers and nearly 48% of mothers rarely or never read to their children at home. When children reached the age of 3, nearly 4 out of 10 fathers (38%) and almost 3 out of 10 mothers (27%) still reported rarely or never reading to their children.
2. Mothers read to their children each week at a higher frequency than fathers from the age of 1 to 3. Furthermore, if we categorize "7-9 times a week," "10-12 times a week," and "13 times or more a week" as "frequent" (i.e., at least one shared reading session per day), 7% of fathers and 11% of mothers engaged in frequent shared reading when children were 1 year old. By the time children were 3 years old, 14% of fathers and 20% of mothers frequently read to their children, doubling the proportion from when children were 1 year old, but the proportion of frequent shared reading still remained relatively low.

Compared to the ELFE project results of French fathers and mothers in the parent questionnaires regarding reading to the child at age 1, Taiwanese parents have a higher percentage of "never" reading to their children (46% and 33%, respectively) than French parents (40% and 21%, respectively). If we define "frequent" shared reading in the French ELFE project as reading with the child at least once a day on average, the proportion of Taiwanese fathers and mothers who "frequently" engage in shared reading with their children at the age of 1 (7% and 11%, respectively) is lower than that of French fathers and mothers (24% and 43%, respectively).

About Prof. Shuobin Su
Prof. Shuobin Su, previously served as the director of the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, holds the position of Professor at the National Taiwan University Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature and is currently the director of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of the National Science Council (NSC). Dr. Su's academic background spans various disciplines, including sociology, cultural studies, literature, history, and art, which makes his academic works diverse. In recent years, he has devoted lots of effort to "creative nonfiction,” a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. About his personal life, Prof. Su is a dedicated father in his son's growth. He was actively involved in the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) from his son’s young childhood to adolescence. Moreover, he enjoyed telling bedtime stories, continuing this practice until his son reached the fourth grade.

Book Review
La Tête Ailleurs is a storybook written by André Bouchard and illustrated by Quentin Blake. The author uses exaggerated and humorous narration to depict a temporarily disordered family in which the father, after losing his head, becomes incredibly easygoing and obedient, doing whatever he's asked. One day, the father's head returns after a period of being too absorbed in work, and life returns to normal as his mission concludes. Its French version is available at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/2878334558), and readers can find its Chinese version at Books.com.tw (https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010617818). Click https://youtu.be/RKuy_GH9eNU to listen.