The classroom-based research discussed in this article focuses on how elementary students' experiences with a collection of postmodern picturebooks developed their narrative competence. This article explores how 39 Grades 3 and 4 students' written and visual texts were affected by reading a particular selection of picturebooks. The students wrote…

In the picture book "Shortcut" (1995), the mediated telling of the fabula (the story) by David Macaulay results in a nonlinear and nonsequential syuzhet (the plot). Several metafictive devices used in the construction of the syuzhet of "Shortcut" draw attention to its status as text and fiction. Although researchers and theorists have written…