Storytime: Young Children's Literary Understanding in the Classroom

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Teachers College Press, 2008 - Education - 305 pages

The author draws on his own extensive research in urban classrooms to present a comprehensive, grounded theoretical model of children’s understanding of picture storybooks—the first to focus specifically on young children. 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 responses reveal that children are engaged in different types of literary meaning-making; and that these types of meaning-making are examples of five foundational aspects of literary understanding.

Capturing the liveliness of children’s responses, this dynamic volume:

  • Describes picture storybooks as sophisticated aesthetic objects worthy of children’s literary critical abilities.
  • Offers a theory of literary understanding that is relevant to contemporary young children from a wide variety of ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
  • Includes a wealth of examples of children’s responses to literature and how teachers scaffold their interpretation of stories.
  • Examines the significance of young children’s literary interpretation, factors that influence literary understanding, and implications for practice and further research.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
1
PICTUREBOOKS
11
FIVE ASPECTS OF LITERARY UNDERSTANDING
83
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Lawrence R. Sipe is an associate professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

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