Images with narrative intent are ideally suited for beginning art viewers. As cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen has discovered in her research on aesthetic development, viewers at this stage-children and adults alike-look for stories in art, even when the artist did not intend them. In this first "Aesthetic Stage" viewers are considered "accountive" storytellers. They make concrete observations about an artwork that contributes to a narrative. If selected appropriately, artworks with narrative content have the potential for many levels of interpretation and are especially intriguing for young viewers. Themes about work, play, and family interaction, which relate directly to a child's life experience, are especially ideal for exploration. Images should be accessible and provide points of entry to which children can relate, but they should also be open to interpretation, with a range of possible meanings. This allows children to experience a variety of points of view as they and their classmates mine the images for stories. With careful guidance, students can move gradually to more complex images over time. This paper describes the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) developed by art educator Philip Yenawine, who collaborated with Abigail Housen to design school and museum programs that foster cognitive growth through interaction with art images. The author describes how some of the VTS strategies are applied to classroom activities designed to help young children interpret the visual stories that can be discovered in two-dimensional images. The four images described all refer to the artists' memories of their own early childhood years. (Contains a list of 3 resources.)