Reading situations are considered multimodal language learning settings that support children's language acquisition in various ways and prepare them for written language and literary learning in school, even at the preschool age. Furthermore, numerous other developmental processes in children can also be promoted through reading aloud. This particularly includes cognitive and emotional domains of acquisition as well as the training of visual information processing. Due to the diversity of learning areas associated with reading aloud, several disciplines study it as a research subject, such as linguistics, literary studies, psychology, and educational research. What they all have in common is a focus on the opportunities that reading aloud offers for early childhood development. This volume brings together the different perspectives.