30 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION – AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL
The Nutritional Moral of the Story: An Examination of
Storybooks Used to Promote Healthy Food-Choice Behavior
Ben Seipela, Sarah E. Carlson
b, Stephanie Bianco-Simeral
a,c,
Martin Frigaardc, Cindy Wolff
a,c, & Keiko Goto
a,c
a California State University, Chico
b University of Oregon, Center on Teaching and Learning
c Center for Nutrition and Activity Promotion, CSU, Chico
In this interdisciplinary study, storybooks, selected for their positive health-
food messages, were analyzed for their appropriateness and potential
effectiveness in changing student food behaviors. The storybooks selected are a
part of the State of California’s Harvest of the Month® program that promotes
healthy food choices for elementary students in low-resource school districts.
Analyses of the texts and morals of the stories indicate that the current
storybook selections do include positive health and food messages, but also
include morally ambiguous messages that are not food related.
Introduction
Storybooks are relatively inexpensive, durable products used over many
years in schools. The Center for Nutrition and Activity Promotion (CNAP) and
similar research centers use storybooks to enhance nutrition education activities
through the State of California’s Department of Public Health Harvest of the
Month (HOTM) program. The program’s explicit goal is to raise food awareness
and the consumption of fruits and vegetables through reading in low-resource
schools (Harvest of the Month, 2007). To our knowledge, there has been limited
evaluation to assess the effectiveness of storybook use in schools to elicit
behavior or cognitive changes, such as nutrition habits and awareness. In
addition, readability or age appropriateness analyses have not been completed.
However, there is reason to believe that the use of HOTM storybooks can
change behavior because such impact has been found through use of other media
such as film (Bell, Berger, Cassady, & Townsend, 2005), television
programming (Signorielli & Lears, 1992), social media (Young, Anderson,
Beckstrom, Bellows, & Johnson, 2004), and advertisement/social marketing
(Brownell & Horgen, 2004; Harrison & Marske, 2005; Young et al., 2004).
Additionally, the use of popular nutrition books has been shown to promote
critical thinking skills in college students (Benedict, 2013).
Merely providing books, however, is not enough to elicit change in nutrition
behavior, awareness, or cognition. For example, McGill-Franzen and colleagues
found that providing books to classrooms of children is necessary but not
sufficient for language development (McGill-Franzen, Allington, Yokoi, &
Brooks, 1999). Specifically, it may be that providing storybooks may promote
food awareness and consumption of fruits and vegetables, but may not be
Nutritional Moral of the Story 31
sufficient to elicit actual changes in food choices or learning new food
vocabulary and developing nutritional comprehension. Gripshover and
Markman (2013) found that reading storybooks to children did foster deeper
understanding of nutrition, nutrients, digestion, and new food vocabulary.
However, the texts of the storybooks were expository in nature in that they
emphasized one nutritional concept (e.g., digestion, food variety, nutrients) as
opposed to traditional, commercially-available, narrative storybooks which
generally do not. Additionally, their study included interactive aspects such as
questioning. Such interaction may be vital for comprehension, learning, and
intervention effectiveness.
Storybook reading research has focused on young children and on child-
adult, either parent or teacher, interaction (Ganea, Pickard, & DeLoache, 2008).
Specifically, much research has focused on the vocabulary and literacy
development of the child (e.g., Sénéchal & Cornell, 1993; Penno, Wilkinson, &
Moore, 2002). Findings from these studies indicate that children who read
storybooks with adults tend to have larger and better vocabularies that lead to
better reading comprehension (Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). However, there is
little research to indicate that young children can apply the knowledge that they
learn from storybooks to real-life situations. Furthermore, there appears to be
even less research on the effectiveness of learning and transfer from storybooks
for elementary students regarding vocabulary or, more importantly, content,
such as math or life lessons from one context to another (Barnett & Ceci, 2002).
One line of research regarding the transfer of storybook learning to other
contexts has focused on the moral of the story and moral development of
children. For example, storybooks and their respective morals of the story are
commonly used for promoting moral development in young children through
vicarious learning (Clare, Gallimore, & Patthey-Chavez, 1996; Krogh, &
Lamme, 1985). Specifically, storybooks are commonly used to teach children
concepts of sharing (Krogh & Lamme, 1983), caring (Lamme, 1996), courage
and justice, (Siu-Runyan, 1996), honesty, friendship, self-reliance (Koc &
Buzzelli, 2004), or even how to behave in school (e.g., Miss Nelson is Missing
written by Allard, 1977). Clare, et al. (1996) indicated that in order for students
to develop appropriately from a moral of the story, the teacher must be able to
select age- and developmentally appropriate themes and also be able to lead
meaningful discussions around those themes. Koc and Buzzelli (2004) added
that teachers should select stories based on key criteria, including well-defined
dilemmas, powerful plots, and clear consequences; the stories should also be
suitable for follow-up activities (p. 95).
Students can learn about morals through the actions, rewards, and
punishments of characters in storybooks with well-defined moral dilemmas
(Koc & Buzzelli, 2004) and from follow-up discussion (Clare, et al., 1996).
However, it is not clear whether storybooks always have such clear moral
dilemmas or whether multiple teachers would identify the same moral dilemma
32 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION – AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL
in a given story. In addition, storybooks and stories in general often have sub-
goals that are motivated by a larger goal structure. For example, in the classic
story Stone Soup (e.g., McGovern, 1986), the main character is motivated by the
goal to eat a hearty soup. This goal then leads to consecutive sub-goals in which
the main character wishes to add other tasty ingredients to the pot of soup by
tricking/convincing an old woman into adding the ingredients. Although
structurally and morally the same, this sub-goal presents a new sub-moral
dilemma for the readers to track. Additionally, it is unknown whether the moral
of any one story is clear and consistent among readers. For example, in Stone
Soup one reader may think that the main character is tricking the old lady, while
another reader may think that the main character is merely engaging in harmless
persuasion. As such, storybooks selected for their use of healthy foods, such as
Stone Soup, may have plot devices or moral dilemmas that do not focus on
making healthy food choices. These text-based factors of stories are not the only
influence on a reader’s interaction with the storybooks.
Morals of the story may also be influenced by a reader’s standards of
coherence (i.e., reading goals, reader ability, and text type; van den Broek,
Lorch, Linderholm, & Gustafson, 2001). For example, three readers may
separately identify different morals of the story in Stone Soup if they are
instructed ahead of time that they will read a book about deception, cooperation,
or preparation of healthy foods, respectively. Additionally, given the narrative
nature of most storybooks, readers may have standards of coherence that focus
on characters’ actions and motives (van den Broek, Rapp, & Kendeou, 2005)
rather than on the moral of the story. Consequently, readers may not pay
attention explicitly to the moral of the story.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to address three key components of selected
Harvest of the Month (HOTM) books:
1. Examine the children’s books selected for HOTM to determine whether
the books are appropriate in terms of grade-level readability.
2. Determine whether the books selected for the HOTM actually promote
healthy eating.
3. Determine which books would be most effective in changing student
eating behaviors based on the content of the storybooks (i.e., the moral
of the story).
Method
Participants
Norming study. Students (n = 25; 14 females, 11 males) enrolled in teacher
education courses at a mid-sized state university in northern California were
randomly selected from a pool of participants to participate in a norming study
to identify the moral of the story. Teacher-credential candidates were selected
Nutritional Moral of the Story 33
as participants for this study because the tasks mirror their future professional
responsibility (i.e., the ability to select appropriate texts for students on a given
task at a given reading level). Participants were at least 18 years old (M = 24.8
years; SD= 7.7; range = 19-53), and English was their primary language.
Participants were racially diverse (White 80%, Hispanic 12%, Black 4%, Mixed
4%). All participants volunteered or received course credit for completing the
study.
Validation study. Students (n = 26; 11 females, 15 males) enrolled in
teacher education courses at a mid-sized state university in northern California
were randomly selected from a pool of participants to participate in a validation
study of the moral of the story. Participants were at least 18 years old (M = 28.3
years; SD= 8.2; range = 20-52), and English was their primary language.
Participants were racially diverse (White 76%, Hispanic 15%, Black 3%, Mixed
3%, No Response 3%). All participants volunteered or received course credit
for completing the study.
Materials and Procedures
Storybooks. Sixteen commercially available storybooks were selected for
this study. Eleven of the storybooks were selected from the USDA-approved
HOTM book list. Five additional storybooks were selected to use as control texts
(e.g., they did not contain references to healthy eating choices), and were
comparable to selected HOTM storybooks regarding age appropriateness and
readability. The list of selected books appears in the appendix.
Norming study. For the norming study the questionnaire for identifying the
moral of the story was a packet that listed the titles of the storybooks. Spaces
were included to write the moral of the story, indicate how long it took to read
the book, and indicate at which grade a child could read the book independently.
Participants were instructed to read each storybook silently, record the time it
took to read each book, indicate at which age a child could read the book
independently, and write a one-sentence moral of the story.
Validation study. The validation study questionnaire packet was identical
to the packet for the identifying the moral of the story with one key exception:
instead of writing a moral of the story for each book, participants rank-ordered
the top five morals presented in the story. (See the results section for details on
how these morals were obtained from the norming study). There were 4 parallel
forms to ensure that the order of the five morals for each story did not influence
how participants rank-ordered the statements. Participants were instructed to
read each storybook silently, record the time it took to read each book, indicate
at which age a child could read the book independently, and, for each story,
rank-order the five most frequent morals of each story (1= best fit, 5= least fit),
which had been identified from the norming study.
34 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION – AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL
Results
Readability and Reading Time
The results regarding the readability of the HOTM storybooks as measured
by their Flesch-Kincaid Grade (Kincaid, Fishburne, Rogers, & Chissom, 1975)
are presented in Table 1. For the purpose of this measure, data from the
norming and validation studies were pooled.
Table 1.Readability, perceived grade level, and time to read all storybooks.
Perceived
Grade
Reading Time
Book F-K
Grade
M SD M SD
Across the Stream 0.00 0.78 0.58 1.12 0.35
Don’t Laugh at Me 1.09 1.63 0.73 1.76 1.01
Does a Kangaroo Have a
Mother, Too? 1.10 1.00 0.46 1.29 0.50
Up! Up! Up! It's Apple Picking
Time 1.10 2.49 0.79 3.76 1.48
The Monster Who Ate My Peas 2.11 3.21 0.88 4.96 1.55
Never Eat Cabbage on
Thursday 2.28 2.12 0.99 2.30 0.93
Stone Soup 2.40 2.60 1.07 3.76 1.09
Little Pea 2.45 1.40 0.73 1.90 0.57
Delicious! A Pumpkin Soup
Story 2.64 2.73 0.84 4.45 1.74
The Tiger and the Dried
Persimmon 3.54 3.24 0.85 3.94 1.22
Too Many Pears! 3.62 1.31 0.58 1.96 0.72
The Berenstain Bears 3.68 2.84 1.09 4.78 1.61
Princess Picky 3.93 3.43 0.94 5.53 1.65
The Very Hungry Caterpillar 4.22 1.16 0.62 1.53 0.50
Mousetronaunt 4.33 2.35 0.80 2.88 1.05
Alexander and the Great
Vegetable Feud 5.45 3.88 1.23 4.88 1.65
Note. Reading time in minutes. Harvest of the Month book titles are in italics.
Moral of the Story Data from the norming study were coded independently by two researchers
to identify the themes in participant responses. There was 90% agreement
between coders. Disagreements were resolved via conversation between coders.
The five most frequent themes or morals of each storybook were then used in
the validation study. The rank-order data from the validation study were
analyzed using the Friedman test (Friedman, 1937). The five most frequent
themes or morals of each story from the norming study and their final rankings
in validation study are listed in Table 2.
Nutritional Moral of the Story 35
Table 2. Most frequent morals of the stories and their final rankings.
Book Rank Moral
Across the Stream 1.67 Everyone needs help sometimes
2.00 A bad beginning can have a happy ending
2.67 It’s important to make friends
4.33 Curiosity is good
4.33 Helps children improve reading skills
Alexander and the
Great Vegetable Feud
1.83 Teaches children nutritional information
2.00 Vegetables are good and good for your body
2.33 Vegetables are important for health
3.83 Try new foods
5.00 We all are different
Delicious! A Pumpkin
Soup Story
2.31 Try new foods
2.38 Don’t judge something by the way it looks
2.41 Don’t be picky
3.59 Eating is important
4.31 Working together makes things easier
Does a Kangaroo
Have a Mother, Too?
1.60 Everyone has a mother
2.40 Mothers love their children
2.80 Although we differ we have things in common
4.00 Everything in nature comes from somewhere
4.20 Teaches children about animals
Don’t Laugh at Me 2.13 Words and actions can hurt
2.20 Everyone is different
2.80 Don’t judge other people
3.27 Be kind to others
4.60 We all have things in common
Little Pea 2.50 Vegetables taste good and are good for you
2.50 Reversing dinner and dessert to understand
which is better
2.50 We differ in our likes and dislikes
3.50 Compromise is important
4.00 Candy is bad
Mousetronaunt 1.89 Size doesn’t matter
2.67 Differences can be positive
2.78 Hard work pays off
3.33 Everyone can help
4.33 Don’t be afraid to try new things
Never Eat Cabbage
on Thursday
2.25 Helps children improve reading skills
2.75 Don’t eat cabbage on Thursdays
2.75 Teaches children about good habits and behaviors
2.75 Teaches children about
4.50 Do what you are told
36 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION – AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL Princess Picky 1.33 Eating vegetables has many benefits
2.58 Teaches children about nutrition
3.17 It is important to listen to what children have to say
3.58 Trying new foods
4.33 Bribing doesn’t always work
Stone Soup 2.00 Not everything is as it seems
2.17 Being resourceful and generous is good
2.17 People can be tricky and manipulative
4.17 Teamwork can yield good results
4.50 Teaches children about making soup
The Berenstain Bears 1.82 Doing chores and being responsible is important
2.82 A clean house makes a happy home
2.82 Work before play
3.09 Teamwork is essential for families
4.45 Children need to respect their parents
The Monster Who Ate
My Peas
2.00 Try new foods
2.50 Be careful what your sacrifice
2.50 Eat your vegetables
3.25 Don’t judge something by the way it looks
4.75 Don’t be wasteful
The Tiger and the
Dried Persimmon
2.20 Don’t steal; stealing has consequences
2.40 The unknown can be scary
2.80 Don’t do harm to others
3.20 Things can be deceiving
4.40 Don’t listen in on other people’s conversations
The Very Hungry
Caterpillar
1.83 Teaches children about change and growing up
3.00 Eating healthy is important because it helps you
grow
3.17 Eating too much can upset your stomach
3.17 Teaches children about butterflies
3.83 Teaches children about counting and the days of the
week
Too Many Pears! 1.00 Everything in moderation
2.67 Try new foods
2.83 Don’t overuse resources
4.17 Overcorrection is a good behavioral modification
technique
4.33 Necessity can make things worse
Up! Up! Up! It's
Apple Picking Time
1.33 Spending time with family is important and fun
2.40 Making memories is important
3.60 Hard work pays off
3.67 Apples can be used in different ways
4.00 Waking up early can be fun
Nutritional Moral of the Story 37
Note. Harvest of the Month book titles are in italics. Rank is reported by mean
rank based on Friedman test. Food themed morals of the story, either explicit or
implicit, are in boldface.
Discussion
The results of the norming and validation studies indicate that storybooks
do not always have a single, clear moral of the story. In fact, many of the
HOTM storybooks had multiple morals of the story instead of a single moral
(e.g., The Monster who Ate my Peas; Stone Soup), and some did not appear to
have a clear moral of the story at all (e.g., Never Eat Cabbage on Thursdays). In
other cases, there was a clear moral of the story; however, the moral may not
have been food related as intended by the HOTM program (e.g., Up! Up! Up!
It's Apple Picking Time).
Alternatively, there were a few HOTM storybooks that had clear morals of
the story that were food related and promoted healthy eating (e.g., Picky
Princess, Alexander and the Great Vegetable Feud). However, books that had
the most positive, healthy eating promotional messages were geared towards
older students, as demonstrated by both the Flesch-Kincaid reading levels and
perceived grade levels. This higher reading level is also evidenced by the longer
lengths, advanced vocabulary, and complex sentence structure of these
storybooks. Younger students would not be able to read and comprehend these
books on their own. Conversely, older students for whom these storybooks
would be appropriate do not, in general, read storybooks. In fact, older readers
in the late elementary grades (i.e., 4th grade and older) are actively discouraged
from reading storybooks by teachers in favor of reading chapter books.
Implications for Research and Practice
Using storybooks and their morals of the story for instruction helps promote
both moral and educational development. This process has been demonstrated
as a form of vicarious learning and discussion (Clare, et al., 1996; Krogh, &
Lamme, 1985). Specifically, students can learn through the actions, rewards,
and punishments of characters in stories about moral dilemmas (Koc & Buzzelli,
2004) and may also make healthier lifestyle choices.
Even though storybooks can be a good vehicle to reinforce healthy choices,
the messages that can be gleaned from a given book may vary among teachers.
Books in this study had multiple, valid morals. Multiple interpretations would
be good if a single book is used for multiple learning purposes, or to reinforce
different choices, habits, or moral development. Additionally, repeated uses of a
single book can lead to improved fluency and reading comprehension because of
repeated reading.
Storybooks have been used in classrooms to promote food positive images
to children (Harvest of the Month, 2007); however, they may not be sufficient
for changing food-choice behaviors. Students perform better on measures of
literacy when quality children’s books are used by teachers trained to
38 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION – AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL
incorporate discussion with such books (McGill-Franzen, et al., 1999). For
instance, storybooks can promote healthy food awareness, but it is not clear if
having these books in a classroom elicit actual changes in food awareness and
increased learning. Thus, there are limited data on the effectiveness of nutrition-
based books. Nonetheless, children can still acquire language from nutrition-
based storybooks, including new vocabulary words for healthy foods (e.g.,
persimmon) or other nutrition-based vocabulary encountered otherwise (e.g.,
mineral). For instance, it has been demonstrated that a single exposure to a new
vocabulary word can be sufficient for vocabulary acquisition (Seipel & van den
Broek, 2008); however, acquisition depends on many factors such as context
and word family. We argue that whether new food vocabulary acquisition
occurs on the 1st or on the 20
th exposure, even linguistic exposure of healthy
food choices is better than no exposure at all.
It also remains unclear how students cognitively process texts that are
selected for their healthy eating messages but have ambiguous morals. As this
study has highlighted, some stories may have a positive health food message,
but also be morally ambiguous. This is true for such stories as Stone Soup in
which there are many mentions of healthy food, such as vegetables and legumes,
presented in a tale of chicanery. It is not clear how children perceive these
messages, what type of inferences they draw from such a story, or what they
would recall later from the story (van den Broek, et al., 2001). Thus, we
recommend that additional research be conducted to determine which cognitive
processes students engage in when reading various storybooks, how those
processes relate to morals of the story, and how they affect food-choice
behavior.
Storybooks can be a great teaching tool in and out of the classroom. They
can improve literacy skills, increase vocabulary knowledge, demonstrate
decision-making, and model the resolution of moral dilemmas. However, based
on the findings of this study, the moral of the story in some HOTM storybooks
may not be clear (i.e., multiple morals). Storybooks can have multiple morals of
the story, but an interpretation by a teacher or parent may ultimately be needed
to determine the dominant moral to promote. The current study did not evaluate
such teacher or parent roles. Equally unclear from the findings of this study is
the effectiveness of the HOTM book supplementation program in changing or
reinforcing student food choice. Future studies will help determine the extent to
which book selection and teacher interaction will influence student food choices
at school.
References
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Nutritional Moral of the Story 41
Appendix
List of storybooks used in norming and validation studies. (HOTM) indicates the
book is a Harvest of the Month book selection.
Berenstain, S. & Berenstain, J. (2005). The Berenstain Bears and the Trouble
with Chores. New York: HarpersCollins.
Carle, E. (2000). Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? New York:
HarpersCollins.
Carle, E. (1969). The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Cleveland, OH: World
Publishing Co. (HOTM)
Cooper, H. (2007). Delicious! A Pumpkin Soup Story. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux (HOTM)
French, J. (2003). Too Many Pears! Cambridge, MA: Star Bright Books.
(HOTM)
Ginsberg, M. (1982). Across the Stream. New York: Scholastic.
Hawkins, L. J. (2004). Alexander and the Great Vegetable Feud. Morgantown,
KY: Heart to Heart Publishing. (HOTM)
Kelly, M. (2012). Mousetronaunt. New York: Simon & Schuster.
McGovern, Ann (1986). Stone Soup. New York: Scholastic. (HOTM)
Mills, N. L. (2002). Never Eat Cabbage on Thursday. Centennial, CO: Pie in
the Sky Publishing. (HOTM)
Park, J. J. (2002). The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon. Toronto, ON: Groundwood Books. (HOTM)
Priceman, M. (2002). Princess Picky. New York: Roaring Book Press. (HOTM)
Rosenthal, A. K. (2005). Little Pea. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. (HOTM)
Seskin, S., & Shamblin, A. (2002). Don’t Laugh at Me. New York: Tricycle
Press.
Shapiro, J. F. (2008). Up, Up, Up! It’s Apple-Picking Time. New York: Holiday
House. (HOTM)
Schnitzlein, D. (2010). The Monster who ate my Peas. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree.
(HOTM)