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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40 PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION – AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL McGovern, Ann (1986). Stone Soup. New York: Scholastic.

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530-898-6854 Fax: 530-898-6177

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)