Research has shown that storybooks and play sessions help preschool children learn vocabulary, there by benefiting their language and schoolreadiness skills.But the kind of content that leads to optimal vocabulary learning realistic or fantastical remains largelyunexplored.Weinvestigate this is sueaspart of alarge-scale study of vocabulary learning in low-income classrooms.Preschool- ers (N=154) learned 20 new words over the course of a two-week intervention. These words were taught using either realistic (e.g., farms) or fantastical (e.g., dragons) storybooks and toys. Children learned the new words in both conditions, and their comprehen- si on know ledge didnotdifferacross conditions.However,children who engaged in stories and play with a fantastical theme showed significantly greater gains in their production knowledge. Reasons for and implications of this result are discussed.