Once upon a time—actually on March 25—a study was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. It asked what kinds of books enable children to learn facts about wildlife better: fantastical books in which animals wear clothes and speak, or realistic books of, say, the National Geographic variety.

Dear reader, fret not that the lead researcher, Patricia Ganea, an assistant professor in applied psychology and human development at the University of Toronto, is casting aspersions on the Berenstain Bears or Sonic the Hedgehog. Not at all. It is merely an inquiry, she says, into what kinds of books help three- to five-year-olds learn. We asked her to explain.

We wanted to know whether children's learning of facts about unfamiliar animals