This article presents a small case study of two childhood readers of Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, who meet in a research project devoted to a different but related topic. One is Indian by birth and background, the other, Canadian. Their experience of this series is separated by distance (many thousands of miles), time of reading (nearly fifty…

This article draws on a careful study of series fiction read in the 1950s to explore how stereotypes feature in the development of a young reader's competence in learning to process stories in print. Five categories of stereotype are teased out: "embodied stereotypes," understood through physical experience; "working stereotypes," discerned…

Children learn to read at approximately the same stage in life as they start to master their physical environment. This article argues that some of the same mapping and schema-building strategies inform each activity, and draws on examples from a broad range of children's books to support the idea that reading fiction and mapping one's local…

Changes in television technology have fostered changes in how we view fiction on television. This article explores some of these changes in the context of the teenage series, "Felicity" (WBTV, 1998-2002). It draws comparisons with the experience of reading series fiction in print, referring to the children's print series, "The Beverly Gray College…

This article reports on a study of 23 tenth-grade students who created fiction in digital game and written formats. The researchers observed them at work, analysed their stories in both formats, and interviewed selected students to learn what affordances and constraints they demonstrate and/or articulate in such authoring. The students used…

Discusses the intertextuality and metafiction of children's literature for beginning readers; specifically Allan Ahlberg's "Ten in a Bed." (MG)

Describes one element of the reading act as it operates in time--how "good-enough" readers of complex fiction strike a personal balance between the need for momentum and the need for accountability to the text. Draws from protocols provided by 33 readers, from eighth grade to Ph.D. level, following two readings of a novel. (PA)

Looks at implications of children meeting stories and storybook characters not only through books and videos but through anything from toys and games to pajamas. (RS)