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(4) Changes in Setting.
About 16% (38) of the conversational turns were primarily concerned
with children’s ideas about how the setting might have changed during
the page break. Changes in setting are closely related to character
actions; however, we felt it was justifiable to count this as a separate conceptual
category because of the emphasis in the children’s responses on
this important traditional element of narrative. An alternative would
have been to make changes in setting a subsection of character actions;
however, the effect of this would be to obscure the focus of the responses
on setting, because character actions already comprise the largest category.
An example of children’s discussion about changes in setting during
page breaks occurred between the sixth and seventh openings of My
Friend Rabbit, when children speculated where Rabbit might have gone to
find all the animals, after the teacher began the conversation:
Teacher: What else is happening between these pages?
Peter: I think he’s going to the zoo to get animals.
Tommy: I think they’re getting all the animals from like Africa and Egypt.
Kathy: I think they are already in the zoo and they’re just going into different
cages to get the animals.
(5) Elapsed Time.
In about 8% (20) turns, the children offered suggestions about how much
time might have gone by between one opening and the next. In Hondo and
Fabian, the 12 th opening shows Fabian with a «turkey sandwich» mentioned
in the text, and the 13 th opening depicts Hondo outside the house
and back from his trip to the beach, with the words, «At last Hondo
comes home. It’s time for dinner!» Jane, beginning the TU, observed,
«Maybe what they were eating [on the 12 th opening] was their lunch and
then it got darker and hours passed and then they are having dinner [on
the 13 th opening].» Jane thus inferred that several hours had gone by during
the page break.
(6) Changes in the Reader’s Visual Perspective.
A few (3% or 7) conversational turns made observations about how the
children’s own visual perspective had changed as viewers/readers during
a page break. From the third to the fourth opening of Wild Things, Alice
(beginning the TU) noticed, «If you turn back a page [to the third opening],
the bed is actually bigger than the one on that page [the fourth
opening].» Abigail agreed: «Maybe we are moving farther away.» Abigail’s
response to Alice indicated her realization that we as readers/viewers had
moved physically back from the scene between the third and fourth
openings. Abigail and Alice first noticed the difference in perspective
between the two spreads, and then were able to make the inference that
they as viewers had moved «farther away» during the page break.
(7) Changes in Literary Genre.
For only one readaloud (Where the Wild Things Are), the children noticed a
change from one literary genre to another during page breaks. This type
of talk occurred only 7 times (about 3%). Wild Things is the only book in
the set to have such a change in genre, and therefore the only book where
such a response could have occurred. Max begins his adventure at home,
doing things a boy might realistically do, but when he is sent to his room,
imaginary elements begin. In other words, the genre changes from realistic
fiction to fantasy. The children had been taught these literary
terms, and were able to use them to describe the change between the
third opening, where Max is standing in his bedroom, and the next opening,
where trees are beginning to grow in the same room. Beginning the
TU, Abby suggested, «Maybe this [the third opening] is the end of realistic
fiction.» Abby was implying that the page break signaled the transition
from Max’s realistic adventures to a form of fantasy. In this comment, we
can see that the children were speculating about the page break as the
site of the abrupt change in the story from realistic fiction to fantasy.
SIGNIFICANCE
This study extends and supplements current pedagogical literacy practices
in primary classrooms by providing a way for practitioners to engage children
in discussion of an important element of picture storybooks that has
been hitherto unexploited. We claim that exploring the liminal spaces of
page breaks may help children to make richer meaning from these types of
texts. Specifically, the study suggests a way of inviting children to make
high-level inferences during storybook readalouds, without undue teacher
control. This study appears to be the first to focus on children’s interpretations
of page breaks in picturebooks, and is meant to open up the issue for
further research. The study provides evidence that page breaks contribute
to children’s sophisticated meaning-making and literary interpretation. In
addition, the study shows that relatively few direct questions by the
teacher may plant the idea of page breaks in children’s minds, and they
will then spontaneously speculate about what happened between two successive
doublespreads. This type of speculation develops children’s critical
and inferential thinking, and positions them as co-authors of the book,
along with the author and illustrator. Instead of the rather artificial and
compartmentalized approach where teachers may say, «Today we are going
to focus on learning inferences» or other topics such as making predictions
or discerning the main idea, this study suggests that children can be
taught high-level inference-making in much more integrated, meaningful,
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