Signals · Issue 1
What children may learn when smell enters the page
In a traditional book, an apple can be named, described, or pictured. In a scratch-and-sniff book it can also be smelled. The reader scratches a small surface built into the page and breaks microscopic capsules containing an aromatic substance. For a moment, image and word are accompanied by an odor.
Scratch-and-sniff books have circulated at least since the 1970s and have usually been treated as entertainment products. A 2025 study in Multisensory Research, however, examined them as cultural objects capable of showing how olfaction is gradually introduced into reading and adapted to different age groups.
An Unusual Archive
Jas Brooks, Natalia Kucirkova, and Charles Spence analyzed 334 books containing olfactory elements. They did not observe children reading or experimentally measure what they learned: they studied the books themselves, classifying the odors presented, target age groups, vocabulary used, and the relationship between smell, images, and narrative.
The study does not show that smelling a page automatically improves vocabulary, memory, or comprehension. It does show, however, that publishers organize olfactory experience in ways that are far from random, and that complexity tends to change with the age of the intended reader.
This Is What an Apple Smells Like
Books for younger children mainly contain simple, easily recognizable odors. The source is shown and named explicitly: the child sees the object, reads or hears its name, and smells the corresponding patch. Word, image, and odor openly coincide.
The book already supplies the answer and shows how a sensation that is difficult to name can be linked to a visible source and a linguistic label. For smell this is especially important: in European languages odors are in fact named mainly through their sources.
When the Book Does Not Tell Everything
As the intended age increases, the relationship becomes less direct. The odor may not be named immediately, or it may appear as the consequence of a narrative action. The reader must then reconstruct the source, predict what will be smelled, or interpret the characters’ reactions. Smell no longer merely confirms an identity. It becomes a clue.
From Apples to Smelly Feet
Books for older children more often contain smelly feet, rubbish, animals, and bodily functions. The immediate explanation is that these things are funny. Unpleasant odor introduces a form of controlled transgression: the book allows children to encounter what is normally avoided or judged improper, but encloses it within a shared game.
The laughter is not socially neutral. To understand the joke, a child must already know that some smells are considered embarrassing, that they should not appear in certain settings, and that they provoke conventional reactions. Children gradually learn that some odors may be displayed and others hidden; some are associated with care, others with dirt.
A Manufactured Smell
What the reader smells is not the apple shown on the page, but a substance manufactured to represent it. The child encounters not the natural smell of the object but a conventional reconstruction. The fragrance must be stable, recognizable, and strong enough to survive on the page.
The sensory book does not eliminate mediation. It makes mediation more complex. The reader moves from word and image to a culturally recognizable chemical representation of the thing.
Reading with the Body
Reading is often imagined as mainly visual and mental. In reality the body is always involved. The scratch-and-sniff book makes this involvement explicit. To gain access to part of the text, the reader must perform an action, create friction, bring the nose closer, and inhale. The information has to be activated.
When smell simply repeats what image and word have already communicated, it risks remaining decoration. When it supplies a clue, alters the atmosphere, or allows the reader to share a character’s perspective, it becomes part of narrative construction.
Toward Olfactory Literacy?
The authors use the notion of olfactory literacy: the ability to attend to odors, distinguish them, connect them to sources, describe them, and understand their social meanings. Scented books could provide an early space in which these abilities are practiced alongside verbal and visual reading.
It is a promising hypothesis, but one that still requires experimental verification. The merit of the study lies in taking seriously publishing objects that for decades were treated as little more than toys.
The Page Is Not Odorless
Books to smell do not prove that adding fragrance automatically makes reading richer. They do show that smell can identify a source, become a narrative clue, and transmit judgments and social norms.
The scratchable surface does not merely add another sense to the page. It shows how the senses are educated through words, images, expectations, and values. Learning to smell also means learning what a culture considers recognizable, pleasant, ridiculous, or improper.
Essential Reading
Brooks, J.; Kucirkova, N.; Spence, C. (2025), “How Scratch-and-Sniff Books Encode Smell Across Development”, Multisensory Research, 38(6–8), pp. 543–585. DOI: 10.1163/22134808-bja10176.
Spence, C.; Kucirkova, N.; Campbell, J.; Gao, Y.; Brooks, J. (2024), “Narrative Historical Review of Scratch-and-Sniff Books and Their Key Storytelling Features”, i-Perception, 15(3), 20416695241257566. DOI: 10.1177/20416695241257566.
