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“Ah, I know why…”: children developing
understandings through engaging with a
picture book
Christine Braid and Brian Finch
Abstract
This article describes part of a study that explored the
responses of nine- and ten-year-old children during a
picturebook read aloud in a small group setting in a
New Zealand classroom. The read aloud was interac-
tive, where the participants were encouraged to re-
spond to the book and to each other throughout the
session. The authors created a framework for
analysing the responses, adapting the model of Law-
rence Sipe (2008) with its five categories of literary un-
derstanding, by expanding on the analytical category
to enable a finer analysis of the responses. This article
discusses the children’s depth of thinking and the un-
derstandings they developed as they engaged with
the read aloud. It also describes how the adapted
framework allowed a closer analysis of these under-
standings, including the way the elements of art used
in the illustrations contributed to the children’s ideas.
The findings suggest ways picturebooks can be used
to promote children’s thinking and how teachers can
guide discussion about a complex text. Implications
for use of the framework in further research are
discussed.
Key words: children’s literature, picture books, literary
understanding, children’s responses, interactive read
aloud, thinking skills, community of readers
The importance of story
The activity of sharing stories is a fundamental human
experience. It is a feature of our daily lives and commu-
nications. Stories are a way of ordering our experience,
constructing our reality (Bruner, 1986; Rosen 1986) and
making sense of our lives (Pantaleo, 2008). We recall
events or tell about future happenings using the
structure of a story. An understanding of story fosters
comprehensive literacy skills for readers, but also char-
acters’situations provide readers with opportunities to
more fully understand their own lives (Nikolajeva,
2012; Sipe, 2008). Fisher (1997) states that narrative
comprehension is one of our most complex human
capabilities, yet it is also one of the earliest powers to
appear in a young child’s mind. The importance of this
early understanding and interpretation of stories is the
focus of Lawrence Sipe’sStorytime (2008) in which he
develops a theoretical perspective about how young
children develop complex understandings of story
through engaging with picture books. Sipe’s work fo-
cuses on the literary understandings that picture books
can promote, rather than on their role in children’s liter-
acy development. Literary understandings involve
readers engaging with the words on the page as well
as with narrative shapes and structures, genre features,
and author and illustrator styles (Martinez et al., 2003)
present in the book; in short, engaging with the story in
terms of how it is conveyed and its patterns and
connections.
As a result of analysing children’s responses to picture
books and the narratives within them, Sipe (2008) con-
structed a theoretical model, which aimed to identify
and describe children’s responses to and understand-
ings of the literary nature of texts. He generated five
key categories of response: analytical, intertextual, per-
sonal, transparent and performative. These are further
described in Table 1. The five categories value a
breadth of responses, from an aesthetic response of
‘Wow’as a page is turned, to a personal response of
“This reminds me of…”, to an analytical response in-
ferring characters’feelings or theorising about themes.
As part of his work, Sipe (2008) expresses surprise that
the visual aspects of a picture book have not been the
focus of more research, given that they make signifi-
cant contributions to the meaning of the story. In a
well-crafted picture book, the pictures and the words
work as a double act (Grey, 2006) or duet (Cech, 1983)
with the pictures conveying different aspects of the
narrative to the words. In such texts, the pictures
and the words create the meaning together, with both
bearing “the burden of narration”(Huck, 1997, p. 199).
These books are multilayered texts that require readers
to be actively engaged, using clues from both the pic-
tures and the words as they interpret the narrative.
Within such picture books, the words and the pictures
encourage a multi-consciousness that does not happen
when attending only to the words (Meek, 1988). Readers
must take an attitude of careful scrutiny (Arizpe and
Styles, 2008) to interpret the narrative and make connec-
tions between what is shown and what is said
(Nikolajeva, 2010).
We elected to use a picture book as the text for this
study because of the opportunities the features of a
Copyright © 2015 UKLA. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Literacy Volume 49 Number 3 September 2015 115
Literacy
picture book afford in developing a child’s literary un-
derstandings. In this article, we explore how the frame-
work we created by extending Sipe’s categories en-
abled us to consider the role of visual elements as we
analysed the children’s responses in our wider study.
The research study
In our research, we investigated children’s responses
to the picture book, Luke’s Way of Looking (Wheatley
and Ottley, 1999) during small group read aloud ses-
sions. The participants were a class of 9-year-old and
10-year-old children from a mid socio-economic area
in a provincial city in New Zealand. The principal re-
searcher took a participant role in the read aloud and
discussion in order for the focus of the research to be
on the children’s responses rather than on how the
classroom teacher facilitated such a session. Children
were encouraged to discuss their ideas during the read
aloud, rather than leaving discussion till the end.
Sipe’s (2008) studies showed that children’s conversa-
tional turns increase in both quantity and quality when
they are allowed to talk and respond during a read
aloud. The interactive read aloud approach enables
the children to listen attentively and responsively to
the book and to the ideas of others, to frame and ask
questions, to present and evaluate ideas, and to argue
and justify points of view (Alexander, 2004). Our aim
was for the children’s voices to be heard (Hansen, 2004)
without a dominance of adult instigated questions
(Myhill and Dunkin, 2005) but rather for the teacher role
to be one of co-participant. The selected approach and
the small group setting allow for the children to explain
what they see and wonder about on each page as the
book is read, ensuring a partnership between partici-
pants’ideas and the ideas in the text (Rosenblatt, 1978).
Prior to the formal research sessions, the participant re-
searcher outlined the study to the class as a whole so
the children could make an informed decision about
their participation. This whole class session involved
a picture book read aloud and a brief explanation of
the art techniques illustrators use to create their mes-
sage. We grouped the 25 participating children into
five groups and each group engaged in one interactive
read aloud session led by the participant researcher
with the selected picture book. The children’s re-
sponses were recorded and analysed using Sipe’s cate-
gories. This first analysis led us to create the adapted
framework, which was then used to analyse the chil-
dren’s response for our final results.
The selected picture book
We selected a picture book where the pictures and the
words enhance or expand on each other (Nikolajeva
and Scott, 2001), demanding a high level of reader in-
teraction (Nikolajeva, 2010). Luke’s Way of Looking by
Nadia Wheatley and Matt Ottley (1999) is a narrative
about Luke who does not seem to fit in at school. His
classmates “thought that Luke was weird”and Mr.
Barraclough is enraged by Luke’s artworks. On each
page, the words and the illustrations work together,
so a reader must engage actively to develop an under-
standing about Luke’s character and his way of seeing
the world.
The book begins with establishing the characters in the
story: All the boys in Mr. Barraclough’s class saw things
the same way, except for Luke, who looked at things differ-
ently. The words are carefully chosen, giving just
enough information and leaving room for the illustra-
tions to add layers of meaning. The illustrator uses
techniques to introduce Luke (arriving late, looking di-
shevelled, a pencil over his ear) and other techniques
to hint at Luke’s feelings about school (lack of colour,
an imposing shadow from the teacher, a window
frame like a cage). This interaction of illustration and
words provided our participants with much to wonder
about and discuss (Figure 1).
The author uses repetition of the teacher’s question
“Why do you do this boy?”and the response of “Luke
didn’t know. So he said nothing”(Wheatley and
Ottley, 1999, pp. 4, 8). This phrase occurs twice during
the story and reoccurs a third time as the final words of
the book, but this time, it is Mr. Barraclough who
“didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing”
Table 1: Categories of responses in literary understanding
Hermeneutic Personal Aesthetic
Creating an understanding
of the story
Relating the story
to oneself
Experiencing the freedom that
art provides
Analytical Intertextual Personal Transparent (receptive) Performative (expressive)
Interpret within Link across Personalise from
or to
See (or be) through Perform upon
Interpreting the plot,
characters, setting or
theme to make sense
of the text
Interpreting this
text in relation
to other texts
Finding links:
text to self or
text to life
Receiving the message
and being part of the
message
Reacting to the message
and taking control
Sipe (2008), p. 182. Five Facets of Literary Understanding: A Theoretical Model
116 Understandings from picture books
Copyright © 2015 UKLA
(Wheatley and Ottley, 1999, p. 29).This simple twist
with the phrase concludes the story in a powerful
way and promotes meaning in terms of plot, character
and theme. The accompanying illustration (Figure 2)
uses a major change in the colour and light, the teacher
no longer an imposing figure and the shadow now one
of wings for Luke.
The illustrations use a range of art media (pen and
ink, coloured pencils and paint on canvas) and sym-
bols (birds, hands and shadows), which are selected
by the illustrator for particular impact (Ottley, 2001).
Colour and light portray emotion, as well as focusing
the viewer on significant objects (Nodelman, 1988).
For example, the illustrations on the first pages of
the book use a monochromatic palette (e.g. Figure 1)
except for Luke’s paintings. Then as the narrative pro-
gresses, the pictures become more colourful, reflecting
how Luke feels about the art gallery in contrast to his
feelings about school. The responses from the children
in our study show that the way the illustrator uses
these visual elements helps readers to understand
the characters, plot and themes of this text.
Using the original framework
Sipe’s original model, summarised in Table 1, formed
the basis of our initial analysis. We found that chil-
dren’s responses to Luke’s Way of Looking fitted the clas-
sifications of hermeneutic (both analytical and
intertextual), personal and aesthetic (both transparent
and performative). We found all five facets to be signif-
icant in helping children create understanding from
the picture book. The general similarities between
Sipe’s data sets and ours show that the categories of
children’s responses created by Sipe (2008) can be val-
idly transferred to other studies. In our study, as with
Sipe’s, we categorised the majority of responses in
the analytical category, where the readers make mean-
ing through using narrative elements, both from the
words and the pictures. The overall comparison of
our results and those of Sipe is shown in Figure 3.
Adapting the original framework
We noted two aspects of the children’s responses that
we wanted to further analyse in response to Sipe’s call
to “validate, extend and refine”the categories (p. 242):
1. the different levels of thinking the children engaged
in as they made meaning from the text; and
2. the way the children used picture book elements to
make meaning from text.
Our framework includes categories for analysing types
of thinking and picture book elements.
Types of thinking
Sipe (2008) states that the children in his study described,
evaluated,speculated,made inferences,predicted and provided
alternative suggestions (p. 90) as they engaged with a pic-
ture book. We decided to investigate the responses from
our study in regard to the different levels of thinking in-
volved as the children engaged in the interplay between
pictures and words. We collated the children’s responses
to a first reading of Luke’s Way of Looking and compared
Figure 1: “All the boys in Mr. Barraclough’s class saw
things the same way”(p. 2)
Figure 3: Comparison of children’s responses between Sipe
(2008) and our study
Figure 2: “Mr. Barraclough didn’t know what to say, so he
said nothing”(p. 29)
Literacy Volume 49 Number 3 September 2015 117
Copyright © 2015 UKLA
these to thinking skills described in taxonomies of Struc-
ture of Observed Learning Outcomes (Biggs and Collis,
1982) and Bloom (Anderson et al., 2001). We identified
the progression of complexity in the descriptors in each
of these taxonomies, for example, from ‘identify’and
‘name’as early levels of thinking through to ‘create’
and ‘hypothesise’as more developed levels of thinking.
We then used a combination of those descriptors in our
four categories (Table 2) to allow us to analyse the type
of thinking in the responses in our study.
Picture book elements
Sipe (2008) refers to a subcategory of analytical re-
sponses, which he defines as “analysis of illustrations
and other visual matter”(p. 117). He lists layout, de-
sign, endpapers, and font (as parts of the book) and
media, style, movement, space and colour (as illustra-
tors’techniques). Other picture book experts use
frame, line, texture, perspective, shape and scale
(Doonan, 1993; Mallan, 1999; Moebius, 1986;
Nodelman, 1988) as terms to consider. We collated
these various terms for illustration techniques and,
along with consideration of the words, they form the
picture book elements in our framework.
The adapted framework (Figure 4) combines three as-
pects: Sipe’s categories of literary understanding (her-
meneutic, personal and aesthetic), types of thinking
(define, combine, integrate and extend) and picture
book elements (the words, the artist’s technique in the
illustrations and the design aspects of the book itself).
The adapted model (described later) enabled us to an-
alyse the depth of children’s understandings and
helped identify which elements of the book they drew
on to develop these understandings. Table 3 shows the
kind of extended analysis our adapted framework al-
lows, with the two columns on the right showing the
additional level of analysis.
The children’s responses
The children’s responses to the text show how they
used the illustrations and the words to develop their
ideas about this narrative. Our first example (Figure 5)
shows how the children explored the use of colour and
used the images of shadows to notice and label what
they saw. The terms in square brackets refer to type
of thinking as outlined in Table 2 and picture book el-
ement as outlined in Figure 4.
Alex: Is that supposed to be there or is it a stain?
[Define; colour]
Researcher: I think it’s always on purpose.
Alex: So that’s like red over there
[Define; colour]
Georgia: Oh so that’s a shadow that’s the wall
[Define; object]
Table 2: Types of thinking in children’s responses from simple to complex
Define Combine Integrate Extend
Look, notice, identify,
label, unelaborated
statements.
Make simple links,
join, order and
organise.
Compare, contrast, predict,
infer, analyse, explain causes,
relate, check and justify.
Create meaning from multiple
links, reflect, assess, generalise,
synthesise, theorise or conclude.
Figure 4: Framework for analysis developed from Sipe (2008)
118 Understandings from picture books
Copyright © 2015 UKLA
This discussion occurs at the beginning of the reading
when the children are establishing how an illustrator
contributes meaning to the print narrative. The chil-
dren continue to explore the mood of a character, using
the clues in the illustrations and in the words. A re-
searcher prompt encourages them to consider further
ideas.
Researcher: How does Luke look here in his shadow?
Georgia: Sad
[Combine]
Talitha: He looks crooked and bent over while in real
life he’s straight
[Combine; shape]
Georgia: Ah! I know why that’s his way but then you
can’t see the man and so that’s the shadow
life and that’s just him without …
[Integrate; symbol]
Talitha: He’s bent there and he’s straight there
[Define/combine; shape]
Researcher: So the shadow life is like another…
Caleb: Realm
[Integrate/extend; symbol]
The children’s understanding builds depth with each
conversational turn and the children engage in a chain
of talk that develops into more complex thinking as the
reading event progresses.
The children continue to consider the meanings of
shadows over many pages, culminating in these re-
sponses on the final page of the book (picture shown
in Figure 2).
Jamie: He’s got wings…it’s coming from his
(pointing to teacher) shadow …the shadow
used to be scary …now he makes wings.
[Extend; symbol]
These excerpts illustrate how the children viewed
shadows first as objects on the page and subsequently
as symbolic, adding to the plot, characterisation and
themes. Other responses show this understanding of
objects and colours acting as symbols. Caleb alerts
the group to the fact that Luke “paints the way he sees
things.”Over the next two pages, the group gathers
more clues from the illustrations, discussing what
Luke is doing in his paintings (Figure 6).
Georgia: That’s how he sees that building.
[Combine; object]
Caleb: He paints what he sees and he paints what he
thinks.
[Extend symbol]
Caleb’s conclusion that not only did Luke paint or see
differently but also that he thought differently comes af-
ter the group’s discussion. Caleb uses the group’s ideas
along with the illustrations and words from preceding
pages, including the title of the book, to create this
meaning.
In discussion, Jaiden demands that the group take note
of the words, and Natalie shows how the pictures add
a layer of meaning to those words.
Jaiden: But can’t you see …that it said he “turned
left instead of right”…and over here it’s all
Table 3: Examples of two-stage analysis of responses
Children’s responses Sipe model Type of thinking Picture book element(s)
Prajina: There’s apple Analytical Define Object
Alex: He does things differently to other people Analytical Integrate Colour
Symbol
Figure 5: Shadow (p. 4)
Figure 6: Luke paints what he thinks (p. 6)
Literacy Volume 49 Number 3 September 2015 119
Copyright © 2015 UKLA
shaded and over here it’s quite light.
[Integrate; words/light]
Natalie: Ahhhh …not ok …(points to the left of the
page)
Ok …(points to the right of the page).
Sam uses clues from the words and the pictures when
he responds to the hint of colour seen through the art
gallery doors and combines this with words from pre-
vious pages, “Luke used his imagination”(p. 5) to pre-
dict and infer what might be in the building.
Sam: Maybe he’ll like the inside …it will be like his
imagination.
[Integrate: words/colour/light]
Sam’s response builds on Sheldon’s comment that out-
side was “all plain but inside was all colour”and
shows a connection to the previous pages, where the
words had mentioned “Luke’s way of looking”(title)
and ‘his imagination’. Sam makes a complex connec-
tion, relating information from different pages of the
book to make an inference about the character of Luke.
On another page, the children connect the clues from
the pictures with what they recall from the words on
previous pages.
Jamie: What’s this? Is it scribble?
[Define; object]
Researcher: It’s like wire …like he’s all wired up.
Hamie: Oh and he can’t talk.
[Integrate; words]
Antonio: And he says nothing.
[Extend; words]
The children engage in an extend type of thinking,
building on the initial noticing of the scribble (define).
Then, using the participant researcher’s prompt, they
think of the phrase (words) from earlier in the text:
“Luke didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing”.
The children conclude that the scribble or wire across
the creature is a signifier of Luke being silent at
school (extend). The children use both the pictures
and the words from across the text to create their
understanding.
Analysis using the adapted framework
A quantitative analysis of the responses revealed up to
200 conversational turns per group in a 20-min session,
showing that the interactive read aloud in a small
group setting with a picture book promoted engaged
discussion with these 9-year-old and 10-year-old chil-
dren. The adapted framework allowed us to further ex-
amine the large ‘analytical’category to see how
children engaged in different types of thinking and
which picture book elements they used in their
responses.
Identifying types of thinking used
For this first reading of Luke’s Way of Looking,there-
sponses were distributed across the types of thinking
as follows: ‘Define’(notice, identify, label) 18.5%; ‘Com-
bine’(link, order, organise) 52%; ‘Integrate’(compare,
contrast, predict, infer, justify) 25%; and ‘Extend’(use
multiple links, generalise, synthesise, theorise) 3.5%.
The patterns reveal that the children most readily en-
gaged in a “combine”level of thinking where they make
simple links, order or organise information. A closer
look at the responses allowsus to see how this ‘combine’
level of thinking built from the ‘define’responses and
led on to some thinking at the ‘integrate’level.
Identifying picture book elements used
For this first reading of Luke’s Way of Looking, the re-
sponses were distributed across the picture book ele-
ments as follows: Object and symbol, 43%; Colour
and light, 22%; and Words, 11%. While other picture
book elements (24%) were not selected for specific
analysis for this study, the framework allows for the
selection of any picture book elements that are appro-
priate for a particular text. The patterns reveal that
the children predominantly used the visual elements
of colour and symbol alongside the words to create ini-
tial understanding.
Cross analysis: types of thinking with
picture book elements
Despite visual elements predominating in children’s
responses, cross analysis with the levels of thinking re-
vealed that children engaged in higher levels of think-
ing when they used significant aspects of the
illustrations alongside the words. The framework
helps us see that the children responded to the way
the words and the pictures work together to convey
this picture book’s whole message.
Discussion
Our study suggests that combining an interactive
read aloud approach in a small group setting with a
carefully selected picture book allows upper primary
children to engage in natural conversation and develop
their literary understandings. The active discussion
of the book during the read aloud helped the children
to construct meaning within a community of readers
(Chambers, 1993; Nodelman and Reimer, 2003). The
adult as co-collaborator allowed the children’s
voices to dominate and the text to guide the readers
(Meek, 1988). The small group size meant that all
children contributed and that the event proceeded as
a conversation (Peterson and Eeds, 1990) rather than a
set of questions and answers.
120 Understandings from picture books
Copyright © 2015 UKLA
Our framework allowed us to see how the children
made discoveries about the text. The analysis shows
that the children had multiple opportunities to engage
in thinking about this picture book and to develop
ideas through discussion together. Secondly, the chil-
dren’s ideas developed in complexity as they engaged
with the book and interacted with each other’s ideas.
Each response made a valuable contribution to
interpreting the text together as a group, and responses
of higher complexity (‘integrate’and ‘extend’) were of-
ten built from responses at the levels of ‘define’and
‘combine’. The children made linkages across the text
(Braid and Finch, 2012a, 2012b), using the information
from one page to make sense of another (Arizpe and
Styles, 2003). They referred to images or words from
previous pages, using the clues to build an interpreta-
tion of the whole text as it was being read. Their re-
sponses showed they could synthesise the clues from
pictures and words across the whole text to generate
ideas about the characters and themes in the story.
Implications for teaching
This study highlights the need for teachers to know how
picture books work and how to facilitate discussions.
When we engage with a picture book, we benefitfrom
having a vocabulary of visual elements and from taking
an attitude that everything an artist includes is a poten-
tial carrier of meaning (Doonan, 1993). Everything from
the book’s title to the endpapers and title pages convey
meaning for readers to explore. The elements the illus-
trator uses in the pictures are clues for the reader to con-
sider as they engage with the text as a whole.
Knowledge about how picture books work also helps
the teacher to select texts that will foster effective discus-
sion and an in-depth literary understanding.
The study shows that a teacher role that involves guid-
ing readers to explore and make connections can result
in beneficial discussion outcomes. When the teacher is
one of the collaborators in the conversation (Cullinan,
1993), it allows the children to explore each page and
develop ideas together. The teacher can at times give
direction or input and at other times be part of the
chain of talk that arises from the exploration. This ap-
proach allows the text to teach the reader how it is to
be read (Meek, 1988), instead of the teacher ’s opinions
leading the discussion.
Implications for further research
The adapted framework needs to be used in other
studies to see if it can be generalised to other books
and contexts. The results from this study could be com-
pared with those from other studies to observe pat-
terns of response. For example, are all groups’
responses mainly at the ‘define’and ‘combine’levels,
and do such responses always provide the launch-
pad for ‘integrate’and ‘extend’thinking? Would more
experience with picture books change these propor-
tions? Would a rereading of Luke’s Way of Looking after
some exploration of the symbols’possible meanings al-
low children to think further about the text? Studies
could explore how the choice of text influences the
types of thinking in which participants engage and
the picture book elements they use. While this article
explores the ‘analytic’category, further investigation
could examine how responses from the ‘aesthetic’
and ‘personal’categories contribute to readers’en-
gagement with and understanding of texts.
Further studies into interactive read alouds with differ-
ent picture books using this framework would begin to
build a more solid evidential foundation for how
readers respond to text. The patterns from our study
could form a useful comparison with other studies of
children’s responses to picture books.
Conclusion
We set out to investigate whether the model used by
Sipe (2008) in his studies could transfer to a different
group of children and a different picture book. We
discovered that the pattern of responses that Sipe
(2008) reported in his studies was closely matched
by our study with older children in a different edu-
cation jurisdiction. The adapted framework showed
how understandings grew as the children engaged
with the book and with each other in discussion.
Our analysis suggests that picture books, with their
essential interdependence of pictures and words,
both demand and foster a complex level of thinking
as teachers guide children through the texts. Based
on the evidence from the analysed responses, we
suggest that the framework could help educators to
see opportunities for children to engage with books
in ways that foster development of both literacy
and literary understandings. We hope that this work
adds to an understanding of the breadth and depth
of learning that the thoughtful use of picture books
can generate.
Acknowledgements
Our thanks to Matt Ottley for his generous permission
to use his images from Luke’s Way of Looking in publi-
cations about this research. Special acknowledgement
is also made to Lawrence Sipe and his body of work.
We acknowledge our colleague, Ken Kilpin, for his
critical reading of this article. We thank Jan MacFarlane
for her design of Figure 4.
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CONTACT THE AUTHOR
Christine Braid, Institute of Education, Massey
University, Private Bag 11 222, Palmerston North
4442, New Zealand.
e-mail: c.braid@massey.ac.nz
122 Understandings from picture books
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