Young readers' narratives based on a picture book: model readers and empirical readers

Abstract

The article present parts of a research project where the aim is to investigate six- to seven-year-old children's language use in storytelling. The children's oral texts are based on the wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You? Which has been, and still remains, a frequent tool for collecting narratives from children. The Frog story tradition presents a strictly structured reading of the book – a reading that does not fully match the readings of the children. Inspired by Umberto Eco's concept of the model reader, I explore the interplay between, on the one hand, the pictures as they appear through a picture-semiotic analysis, and on the other, the empirical readers' narratives and their cultural backgrounds. The main findings are that the Frog story-tradition, in its focus on structure, does not offer a basis for evaluation of the children's narrative language that gives full credit to the children's practices as narrators and language users.