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I've done work in education - mostly teens, but I have some experience of teaching reading to younger children - and agree entirely with what you posted. I think the same reasons mean that older children who haven't learned to read a first language yet gain almost as much benefit from the word being printed on a physical thing that you can touch.
For younger children, the words seem to have a presence outside the physical book. Your example of using puppets to represent a story, or including a real animal in the story are examples of this, I think. It really helps that the book has a physical presence in the classroom space, and that the children have a visible, touchable representation of the story's beginning, middle and end.
I'm sure that some children would be perfectly happy to learn to read using a computer of some kind, but I think this model would run the risk of leaving behind those who tend towards a more kinaesthetic model of learning.
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