Storytime

The author draws on his own extensive research in urban classrooms to present a grounded theoretical model of young childrens understanding of picture storybooks. Advancing a much broader and deeper theory of literary understanding, the author suggests that children respond in five different ways during picture storybook readalounds; that these responses reveal that children are engaged in five different types of literary meaning-making; and that these five types of meaning-making are instantiations of five foundational aspects of literary understanding.