This column examines research studies that foster children to explore the relationship between text and images. The collaboration of an engaging picturebook and a good teacher unlocks rich discussion and interaction among the students. Through visual literacy, children are active participants while making meaning and strong connections. The cited…

Stories are woven so tightly into the fabric of our everyday lives that it's easy to overlook their significance in framing how we think about ourselves and the world. Stories are meaning making, providing a means of structuring and reflecting on our experiences in order to understand their significance. Story is also life making, a way of…

This article explores how reading strategy instruction that targets children's literature can unwittingly interfere with the development of a reading life. It compares the use of story-based children's literature for reading strategy instruction with the "untaught" story. It asks: What, if any, role does a read aloud that is unfettered by formal…

Describes the story grammar and plans analysis approaches to analyzing children's understanding of simple stories. (DD)

Discusses the complexity of the experiences dealt with by young children in story telling, their mastery of techniques and literary forms, and the relationships between the stories and the story teller's own life. (DD)

This study describes the interactions of three adult-child reading partnerships in a program that matches corporate volunteers with "at risk" students for weekly hour-long story reading sessions. Using discourse analysis within a sociocultural framework, the researcher identified variation in the way these partners were constructing the act and…

Presents the value of stories, especially fairy tales, as ways of both tutoring and expressing the imaginative and intuitive side of the personality. (DD)

Describes a project in which children were given in-depth experiences with a range of quality stories and then were interviewed using a series of open-ended questions to obtain their responses. The project was intended to gain insight into the process by which children make sense and meaning from stories. (HTH)

Compares storytelling and story reading in a study of how children and the adult teller/reader interact. Finds that collaboration between storyteller and listener does not manifest itself as readily as between reader and listener. Finds that most of the children prefer teachers to read rather than tell stories. (MG)

Provides a case study of a young child's responses to "Hansel and Gretel" over a four-year period, providing insight as to how literary response develops in the early years. (MG)

Reading instruction, centered around the oral reading of literature, allows children to enjoy stories and forget that they are engaged in an academic exercise.

Shares the experiences of telling stories to three-year-old Tim, who began to take over parts of the stories to tell himself. Suggests that, by making storytelling an interactive event, adults can help children feel comfortable enough in storytelling to be confident of their own emergent narrative ability. (MG)

The importance of parents reading to their preschool age children is stressed.