This paper describes and discusses how children explore and develop digital reading comprehension. While there is an agreement on the importance of reading competency for successful life and work in the 21st century there is still much yet to understand about the complex relationship between reading practices and technology in school. As part of a larger study concerned with understanding the complexity of digital reading practices in early childhood education, this presentation explores the role of auditive processes for developing young children’s reading comprehension when using digital talking books. The study draw on a rhizomatic approach (Masny, 2013; Alvermann, 2001) via the nomad thought of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Young children’s digital reading comprehension is seen as a result of in which ways various tools, auditive processes, alphabetic texts, bodies and feelings interact (cf. Hermansson, 2013; Lenz Taguchi, 2011; Waterhouse, 2011). Taking a rhizomatic approach offers potentials for exploring how auditive processes create potentialities for developing reading comprehension. The empirical data consists of video documentation, field notes and interviews, collected in a Swedish preschool class during five months. The 27 six-year-olds and the teacher had access to his/her own tablet computer. The analysis shows that in the interface between the digital talk, the digital device and the reader emerges a seemingly unpredicted way in which these resources interact. The analysis also indicates that the auditive processes linked to digital talking books creates an increased interactive relation to the text while a digital text without audio are not influenced to the same extent. The discussion highlights the situatedness of what emerges in the digital reading events. This implies a need to acknowledge that what happens in the reading comprehension event, not only on a theoretical level but also in the empirical analysis, in research as well as in classroom practices.

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