The onset of literacy marks a significant change in children’s development. Written language is more complex than everyday conversation, and even books targeted at preschoolers contain more varied words and more complex syntax than child-directed speech does. We review the nature and content of children’s book language, focusing on recent large-scale corpus analyses that systematically compared written and spoken language. We argue that exposure to book language provides opportunities for learning words and syntactic constructions that are only rarely encountered in speech and that, in turn, this rich experience drives further developments in language and literacy. Moreover, we speculate that the range, variety, depth, and sophistication of book language provide key input that promotes children’s social and emotional development. Becoming literate changes things, and researchers need to better understand how and why reading experience shapes people’s minds and becomes associated with a range of skills and abilities across the life span.

识字的出现标志着儿童发展的重大变化。书面语言比日常对话更复杂，甚至针对学龄前儿童的书籍也包含比面向儿童的演讲更多样化的单词和更复杂的句法。我们回顾了儿童读物语言的性质和内容，重点关注最近系统地比较书面和口语的大规模语料库分析。我们认为，接触书本语言为学习言语中很少遇到的单词和句法结构提供了机会，而这种丰富的经验反过来又推动了语言和读写能力的进一步发展。此外，我们推测书籍语言的范围、多样性、深度和复杂性提供了促进儿童社交和情感发展的关键输入。