Examining young children’s envisionment building responses to postmodern picturebooks

The purpose of this study was to examine how young children and their teacher constructed literary meaning through engagement with postmodern picturebooks. We framed our enquiry around Langer’s Envisionment Building theory and specifically examined how young children formed meaning as they moved through Langer’s five stances during and after text encounters. We draw special attention to the dialogic nature of transactions around texts, children’s understandings and appropriation of postmodern picturebook metafictive devices, and the ways in which they hybridize personal experiences with intertextual storyworlds. Our enquiry illuminates how young children and their teacher, having engaged with postmodern picturebooks, readily took up the work of envisionment building to construct novel and complex understandings and ‘go beyond’. Our research further exemplifies how the multifaceted nature of postmodern picturebooks provides rich opportunities for young children to negotiate diverse textual features and respond in unique and meaningful ways as they engage in literary meaning making