This article reports on a study of the responses of a second-grade class to the page breaks in contemporary picturebooks. In a picturebook, the text and accompanying illustrations are divided into a series of facing pages called openings, and the divisions between the openings are called page breaks or turns. Unlike a novel, in which the page…

The author draws on his own extensive research in urban classrooms to present a grounded theoretical model of young children's 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 readalouds; that these…

Children often become deeply immersed in stories. Just as often, however, they may resist reading, or reading certain types of texts. The authors present a typology of six ways in which young children resist stories. Though educators may be inclined to view such opposition as a roadblock to understanding, children's resistance may be the occasion…