How children respond to picture books:

five types of reading comprehension

Lawrence R. Sipe, University of Pennsylvania

Thank you very much for inviting me to talk about my research. I have spent most
of my professional career as a teacher, school principal, graduate student, and university
professor fascinated by young children's responses to literature, especially their response
when their teachers or parents read aloud to them. stories from illustrated albums. This
presentation is the result of 14 years of research on the topic, in kindergarten and the first
two years of primary school. In the United States, kindergarten children are between 4 and
5 years old; those in the first year are between 5 and 6 years old, and those in the second
year are between 6 and 7 years old. My research, therefore, addresses the first three years
of formal schooling in the United States. My studies are similar in certain ways: in
addition to all of them focusing on young children in the class, the vast majority of the
children in my studies are not privileged; They represent various ethnic, racial and socio-
economic backgrounds. I have discovered that children are very sophisticated literary
critics. Furthermore, in all studies, teachers were experienced and knowledgeable about
children's literature, and were adept at leading discussions that encouraged children to
respond freely, rather than simply answering teachers' questions. The analysis of the data
from all my studies is based on established qualitative methods for analyzing
conversations, which involves coding the procedures that establish conceptual categories,
which results in a solid theory. I have not started from an established framework, but
rather I have created the framework for this particular data. That is, rather than coming up
with an a priori theoretical conceptualization of reading comprehension, I wanted to allow
the children's talk while reading picture books aloud to reveal what reading
comprehension meant to them. My talk today, however, does not focus on my
methodology, but rather on the theory of young children's reading comprehension that I
have been developing over the 14 years in which I have conducted formal research.

Simply put, the theory suggests that there are five basic types of responses that
young children have when talking about picture books read aloud to them. Furthermore, I
suggest that these five types of responses represent five different types of reading
comprehension. In the other part of the lecture I would like to give examples of these five
types. I hope that by describing the five ways in which children respond to stories,
teachers and other professionals, as well as academics and researchers, can gain a clearer
view of how children talk about stories. I hope that this vision also leads to a greater
appreciation of children's ability to build reading comprehension. At the end of the lecture
I will talk in more detail about the importance of this work for both training and research.
 Conceptual categories :
Five aspects of reading comprehension

1 Intertextual Analytics Transparent Personal Performative

2
3
4
5
In the first type of response,
The Analytics,
Children use information from the text and illustrations of the book that is read aloud to
them to interpret the situation, characters, plot, and theme. They also analyze the sequence
of the illustrations and other elements of the picture book, such as the endpapers, the title
page, the front cover, and the back cover. Although there are five subcategories for this
type of response, I will only give two examples of the category. The first is an analysis of
the text and the second is a visual analysis of the illustrations.

First, the textual analysis of this category.

During the reading of Paul Galdone's version of Cinderella , Mickey posed a disturbing
question:

Mickey: Why doesn't the shoe disappear?

M: Why doesn't it disappear? I haven't thought about it yet either, Micky. Maybe:
H1 Cal: Maybe it's when, it becomes very very small.
H2 ?: 'Because it's glass.
M: Is that why it doesn't disappear? Because I have always wondered; the rest of the
clothes disappear. Why not shoes?
H3 Gordon: Because, um, the fairy godmother gave it to him to keep.
M: Do you think the fairy godmother had planned it when designing her dress?
H4 Gordon: Maybe not// Maybe it didn't disappear and that's it, maybe, maybe I didn't
have to wear it. Maybe to make it go away you have to take it off or something.
H5 ?: Maybe I had to have both.
M: So that they would disappear? And since you don't wear it, the magic doesn't work?
Terry.
H6 Terry: I think I know why they don't go away. Because she didn't make them, she
probably bought them. They would be taken from the stepsisters.
M: Do you think they were the stepsisters' shoes?
Kevin: No, because before they were dirty and old shoes.
M: Kevin?

Why doesn't the shoe disappear at midnight, just like the rest of Cinderella's magical
clothes? This represents what literary critic Wolfgang Iser would call a gap in the text; the
text does not tell us. And the illustrations don't help us fill it in either. After the teacher
(marked with an M) validates Mickey's question, some of the other children generate a
series of hypotheses (which we have marked with an H). Cal thinks it has to do with the
shoe size ; a boy I couldn't identify suggests that the material (glass) has something to do
with it. Gordon (H3 and H4) introduces the idea of the fairy godmother's intentions , and
then suggests that perhaps the shoes have to be together to disappear. In H6, Terry
suggests that maybe the glass slippers had nothing to do with the fairy godmother, maybe
Cinderella had taken them from the stepsisters. Kevin questions it, because the text says
that they used to be Cinderella's old, dirty shoes.

H7 Kevin: They were probably old, dirty shoes and the fairy godmother touched them
and turned them into glass slippers.
M: So when the clock strikes midnight, why don't you turn into ragged shoes again, like
the clothes you wear?
H8 Kevin: I know// because um, um, it probably ran out of batteries. His wand ran out
of batteries.
M: And the magic didn't touch the shoes.
Kevin: Yes.
H9 Trudy: I know why they didn't disappear, because she had one in her pocket, and
she forgot that she had it in her pocket, and the fairy must have known because she
wanted her to marry the prince.

So, Kevin generates two more hypotheses; The second, H8, could be called the “Duracell
Rabbit” hypothesis: perhaps the magic wand had run out of batteries. Trudy's hypothesis
in H9 brings the conversation back to Gordon's earlier idea of the fairy godmother's
intentions : perhaps the fairy godmother had planned it all . The teacher agrees and
develops the idea. In H10, Cal suggests that the fairy godmother had planned for
Cinderella to lose her shoe, and when Terry focuses the discussion back on Cinderella 's
intentions (she didn't want the prince to catch her), Cal supports him by saying that he
didn't want her to be caught. see with old clothes. The discussion continues for a few more
pages, and goes from Cinderella's embarrassment if the prince saw her in old clothes to the
idea that the prince would be a very superficial boy, if he only liked her for the clothes!
The second example of the analytical analysis category is illustrations. The following
example is from a reading aloud of a dark and chilling version of Little Red Riding Hood
by Christopher Coady, a version in which both Little Red Riding Hood and her
grandmother are eaten by the wolf, and are not rescued by any attentive woodcutter: in the
end of the story, they have died and do not rise again.

CHRISTOPHER
Dutton Children's Book:

The title page is, appropriately, dark and disturbing, with a drawing of a full moon, a bare
tree, and patches of red on the three branches and the bottom edge of the oval.

H7 to Kevin: Surely they were dirty, old shoes and the fairy godmother turned them into
glass slippers .
M: Then, when the clock strikes midnight , why do n't you become ragged again, like the
 clothes you wear?
H8 ic 1Kevin: • I know// d because em 1 em 1 surely : ran out of batteries. r You are left
with without batteries. pq, , g qp. q
M: And the magic . He didn't touch the shoes. 1e lets them know what might happen.
Kevin : Yes i the author and E I i I ustrad or give you a little clue that lets you know
He9v
T n r : u S d í y . : I 1 know why they didn't disappear because he had one in his
pocket, and he forgot that he had it in his s 2 '
forgot
। c q o un e e lo lp ll r e í v n a ci b p a e in his pocket, and the fairy had to know it
because she wanted him to be roasted with F the prince.
ncia Je blood of the wolf that ate Grandma .

Here we have part of the discussion on that page. At point 1, Sean sees the red brush
strokes (notice how he says “brush strokes”) on the moon and on the edge. In 2, Nicole
ventures that the color is suitable for Little Red Riding Hood. In it, Mickey connects red
with blood in the story. In 4, we see how the teacher takes advantage of the children's
observations to make clear what the prediction is: it is an “educational moment”, as Eeds
and Wells propose. In number 5, Julie notices that it must be autumn, and the teacher adds
a reference to the moon. Then, in number 6, Charles sums it all up: “It is a bloody warning
that the wolf is giving, that he is going to eat the grandmother.” Color coding (to use
William Moebius's terminology) is important in illustrated books. Red can represent
excitement and joy; but it can also be a sign (in the semiotic sense) of danger, or a
warning, or blood. Children are learning right now to analyze these visual metaphors and
symbols: this visual text . They are also learning that the opening illustration can set the
setting of the book, giving us a sense of the tone of what will come next.

In short, the responses in the Analytical category refer to an aspect of reading

comprehension similar to those addressed by New Criticism: “attentive reading” and
interpretation of the verbal or visual text, and a certain understanding of the traditional
“narrative elements”: characters, plot, situation and theme.

The second category,

The Intertextual,

It reflects children's ability to relate the story that is read aloud to them with other texts
and cultural products: other books, films, videos, advertisements, TV programs, or the
work of other illustrators and artists. For example, children related various visual texts,
comparing the grainy texture of Chris Van Allsburg's The Sweetest Fig illustrations to the
pointillist art of Seurat, which they had discussed a few months earlier.

As another example of this category, I would like to show the slide with which I
started this presentation. It took place during the reading of The Rough Face Girl , an
American Indian variant of the Cinderella story.

Mickey: In fairy tales, good always wins over evil.

Charles: It's not true. And the original version of Little Red Riding Hood, when the wolf
eats her and they don't save her?
Peggy: Yeah, and Goldilocks, she was the bad guy, and she gets away with it.

In this short dialogue, Mickey makes a generalized statement that is based on his
knowledge of many stories, not just the one being read aloud at the time. Charles and
Peggy disagree, also relying on their knowledge of other specific stories, Little Red Riding
Hood and Goldilocks. These intertextual connections function to help children refine and
extend their fairy tale schemata; to discuss the characteristics of the genre. There were
seven other ways in which intertextual connections were used in the study; which we will
name later.

Basically, responses in the intertextual category reflect the aspect of reading

comprehension that involves understanding the text from the perspective of other texts.
Stories, as author Jane Yolen puts it, “learn other stories,” and one aspect of reading
comprehension is placing stories within a large matrix of literary narrative.
 The third conceptual category is
The Staff.
Another aspect of reading comprehension is the ways in which we draw a story
ourselves, making connections between our lives and the plots, situations, and characters
in stories. Children use some experience from their life to understand or illuminate
something in their own lives. These are what Marilyn Cochran-Smith has called “text-to-
life” and “life-to-text” connections.

For example, Terry, a first grader, made a brave personal connection while reading
Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman.

After the ballet Grace played the part of Juliet,

dancing around her room in her imaginary tutu. I
can be anything I want, she thought.

in which the main character is taken to a ballet and pretends to be a ballerina. At

this point in the story, Terry turned to me and said quietly:

Terry : Mr. Sipe, I have to tell you a secret, but don't tell anyone. I like to play ballet at
home. Sometimes I dance at home. It's fun, I like it.

The entire group made personal connections. While reading Princess Furball , a
variant of Cinderella that begins with illustrations of the princess's mother's funeral, the
children felt the need to start talking about the deaths of people they had known: a
neighbor, their grandmother or another family member. During this long and serious
conversation, Mickey said that he had gone to the funeral of a family friend, a mechanic
who had died of a heart attack and who had been cremated: “They make ashes of you, it's
the only thing that remains.” The children talked about going to the cemetery to bring
flowers, and Mickey said that he was disappointed not to have met one of his
grandparents, who had died before he was born, and that he was jealous of his older
brother, who had met him. . The teacher had the clever position of letting the dialogue
develop during the reading of the story, because it seemed very important to the children.

The children personalized the stories in other ways. For example, they allowed
themselves to intervene in the stories and discussed what they would do if they were a
specific character. Those “I would do” statements allowed them to enter a story and shape
it, as if it were clay, so that it was closer to their way of seeing how things should go. For
children, stories were malleable, they were not immutable or carved in stone. They had
room for them (their personality, their decisions and their abilities). This recognition led
them to another way of personalizing: seeing themselves as the ones who told the whole
story. During the reading of Little Red Riding Hood, Krissy said, “we could do a Little
Red Riding Hood story, like a puppet show, after reading so many stories about her.”
Thus, Krissy imagined giving herself and her friends a place, not in specific details or
episodes of the story, but in the entire story.

In sum, the aspect of reading comprehension that is highlighted by this conceptual

category is the aspect that is valued by the reader's receiving criticism: the reader's
awareness of his or her own personal reactions, feelings, and associations with the text.

The responses of the fourth conceptual category,

The transparent,

indicate that the children had entered what Michael Benton calls “the secondary
world” of the text; who lived what Louise Rosenblatt describes as the “lived” aesthetic
experience of the story. I call this category “transparent” because it seems that the
children's world and the story world have become momentarily transparent to each other.
As this level of involvement was surely more evident when the children listened in
silence, verbal responses in this category were scarce, which indicated, like the tip of the
iceberg, the depth of their involvement. In these types of responses, children respond
directly to the characters in the story, as if they were really immersed in it, or make other
comments that indicate their deep involvement in the story:
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AFRICAN TALE

For example, during the reading of Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters , one of the
characters, the proud and ungrateful sister, vehemently declares: “I will be queen. “I will
be queen.” Immediately after the teacher read it, several children said in a low voice:
“What do you think that is!”

Another example of a response in the transparent category occurred when the

children were discussing Owl Babies , by Martin Wadell. In this story, the three owl
chicks wait for their mother to return to the nest and become increasingly afraid.
 When the children saw the illustration of the mother owl returning with her babies,
Rose, who normally never said anything during the readings, whispered quietly and with
great emotional intensity: “It's coming, it's coming.” When he said it he looked directly at
the illustration, and not at the other children. I understand that Rose, at that moment,
entered the world of the story as if she were one of the chicks, and that her statement was
for herself, when she felt the joy of the chicks (who had been afraid and had felt
abandoned). seeing that his mother returned to the nest.
The aspect of reading comprehension that the responses in this category represent
is the ability to position oneself in the dynamics of a narrative to such an extent that the
story and one's life, for a fleeting moment, come together and are mutually transparent.

The fifth and last conceptual category is

The performative.

Although the responses in this category were few, they are among the most
interesting we have collected.
Here, children playfully manipulate the text to use it for their creative purposes.
The text seems to function as a launching pad for children's creativity and imagination.
These responses are usually somewhat (or very) subversive, transgressive or Dionysian: in
some classes they would be considered simply “not appropriate to the task”.

I have chosen an example of a performative response from The Stinky Cheese Man
by Jon Scieszka (1992), a dry and intelligent book that plays with the language and
conventions of the illustrated album, telling stories as strange as “Little Red Pants” or
“The Princess and the bowling dance.” Even the flap is intriguing:
Right after I read it, the following discussion occurred:

L : … New! Improved! Fun! Well! Go buy it now!

1 Terry: Why?
2 Julie : They even gave him a medal!
3 Gordon : “Why,” say why, say why, Mr. Sipe, say it.
L : What? Okay, why?
4 Gordon : Why? Just because. Where? When? Who? [laughs]
L : [laughing] Okay. New! Improved! Fun! Well! Go buy it now!
5 Terry : I don't want to go now! I don't want to leave now!
??: Go away!
6 Terry : I don't want to go to the bathroom and turn into stinky cheese man!
??: [laughs]
7 Sally : [laughing] Enough nonsense!

In issue 1, Terry questions the text: why do we have to buy the book, just because
the text says so? Julie tries to follow the thread of her comment 2, but the other children
won't let her. In 3 and 4, Gordon imitates the language of the book: “And that? Just
because. Where? When? Who?, which I encouraged by reading a part of the text. In 5 and
6 Terry takes a step that deconstructivist critic Geoffrey Hartman would be proud of,
making puns and using the text as a platform for his own transgressive connection of text
to life. In 7 Sally brings us back to Earth. To use Roland Barthes's term, it is a text of
jouissance , of enjoyment for children; They happily lose themselves in it and, as if they
were little deconstructivists, they treat the text as if it were their playroom, as a totally free
and anarchic game of signifiers, in a manifestation of what, following Bakhtin, I call a
“carnivalesque break.” .”
Another example of a performative response is provided by Terry's comments on
the last page of Anthony Brown's Changes , in which a boy sees his newborn baby sister,
who has just arrived from the hospital. Illustration

shows a close-up of the baby.

L: [laughing] When the door opened, the light came in, and Joseph saw his father,
his mother and the baby .
Tyl: Wow!!! [makes a face and opens his mouth wide, pretending to be the baby]
L: “Hello, honey,” Mom said .
Tyl: [in a high-pitched, flirtatious voice] “Hello, darling, my love, kiss, kiss, kiss.”
L: [laughing] Kiss, kiss !
Tyl: Oh wow, I swallowed a pacifier! [laughing and making a choking noise]

and pay close attention to the baby's tongue, which really looks like a lollipop
inserted incorrectly into the baby's mouth.

In a way, the performative responses interrupted or hindered the serious meaning

that constituted the main activity in which the children were involved. However, another
way to view these responses is to conceptualize them as high-level expressive aesthetic
acts. They represent an aspect of reading comprehension that sees the text as a “receptacle
of associations open to the skill of our responses,” a game of infinitely malleable
signifiers.

These five conceptual categories, together, describe what constitutes reading

comprehension for the kindergarten children, the first and second of my studies: what they
(and their teachers) had constructed as adequate ways of displaying what Jonathon Culler
(1975) calls “reading competence”. The children (1) analyzed the text; (2) they linked the
text with other texts and cultural products; (3) they created relationships between the text
and their own lives; (4) they entered the world of the text and allowed it to (momentarily)
become their world, and (5) they used the text as a platform or playroom for their own
creativity. I have analyzed in greater depth the relationship between these five aspects of
reading comprehension according to (1) the position that children take in relation to the
texts; (2) the actions the children took regarding the books, and (3) how the texts worked
for the children.

Pedagogical implications:
In my studies, about two-thirds of the children's conversations took place during
the reading of the story, and one-third after it had been read. This suggests that if we allow
children to talk during the reading of the story, there could be a richer social construction
of meaning in the story, and a greater breadth of responses. For young children, asking
them to hold off on their response until the story is finished could result in the response
being deleted. Read-aloud situations were important situations for the formation of a
literary “community of interpretation” (Fish, 1980) in the class. Teachers should reflect on
how their reading aloud, norms, and dynamics help form an interpretive community in
their classes.
In most literary circles, literary discussion groups, and reading circles (Daniels,
1994; McMahon & Raphael, 1997), the discussion takes place after the story has been
read. Reading stories aloud offers the possibility of helping children construct meaning
during the construction process itself.

The typology of the children's responses indicates that children's reading

comprehension has at least five aspects. Teachers can consider how they might increase
their students' repertoires so that there is more of the five aspects.

The importance of the peritextual aspects of picture books, as well as the sequence
of illustrations, should not be underestimated. In order to understand the meaning-making
potential of these aspects of picture books, teachers may need to broaden their view of
picture book art, illustration, and theory. By giving illustrations the same importance as
text, teachers can encourage greater interpretive richness and facilitate children's ability to
integrate visual and verbal information.
Because intertextual connections were key in many interpretive processes,
teachers could encourage children to make such connections by (1) reading many variants
of the same story, and (2) directly asking: “What other stories does this story remind you
of?” ?”

Implications for future research:

It is necessary to carry out research that clarifies the connections between reading
comprehension and the broader cognitive processes involved in learning to read and write,
and that situates children's reading comprehension in the broader cognitive processes of
emerging literacy learning. We know that narrative literature motivates children a lot;
What other qualities make literature a very useful tool in learning to read?
The connection between literature and children's writing seems very powerful. By
expanding our view of what constitutes reading comprehension beyond traditional
“narrative elements,” this broader view could reveal more connections between reading
comprehension and writing ability. For example, what impact would performative
responsiveness have on the ability to write with verve and with a strong rhetorical
purpose? What use are intertextual connections in learning to present a coherent
argument? How might the development of personal response help children generate
written texts that “speak” to their readers?
It would be very useful to conduct longitudinal studies of the same children's
reading comprehension development over the next two or more years. Researchers could
explore how new elements are added to children's reading tools and how they use them in
increasingly complex ways.
The five types of reading comprehension represented by the five conceptual
categories of responses of the children in this study must be verified in order to validate,
expand and refine them. What modifications or adjustments are necessary to characterize
the reading responses of other children? In my studies I have used illustrated albums from
three different genres: contemporary realist fiction; traditional fairy and folk tales, and
contemporary fantasy. What impact would the use of other genres have on reading
comprehension? Is there evidence of the crucial importance of intertextual connections in
other classroom contexts?
The integration of verbal and visual sign systems is one of the most relevant
characteristics of illustrated albums. Researchers need to pay more attention to children's
learning of illustration codes and conventions.

Other relevant aspects:

I conclude by observing that, although literary knowledge is important in itself, it also
leads to intellectual and emotional growth. Literary discussion fuels higher-level cognitive
skills, such as inferences, prediction and confirmation, integrating details to see the story
as a whole, and high-level abstraction from the story (such as understanding the theme or
underlying message of history). Stories offer children a way to experience reality through
the experience of others, and offer them new experiences that they would not have in their
daily lives. Interpreting stories allows children to better understand and tolerate other
cultures and customs that are not their own. Stories also help children to detach
themselves from the flow of life, to become more objective and reflective about many
aspects of life. That is, the stories and the literary understanding that children bring to
those stories enhance, deepen, and expand their conceptions of who they are and how they
are part of their family, their community, and the broader world.

Contact information:
Dr. Lawrence Sipe
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania 3700 Walnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104
lsipe@gse.upenn.edu