The purpose of this study was to investigate whether fathers and mothers read differently to their four-year-old sons and daughters and to examine the effect of genre on the interactions that occurred in parent-child, shared book reading. Twenty-five dyads shared two narrative texts and two non-narrative texts. Results indicated that overall, fathers were more interactive than mothers. Fathers and mothers also differed in terms of the types of interactions and there was some gender/genre interaction effect. As well, parents engaged in more interactions in non-narrative texts than in narrative texts. The child's gender also affected the number and types of interactions. Implications for practice, theory and future research are proposed. (Contains 4 figures.)