Literacy standards in early childhood education have recently foregrounded emergent reading processes along with recommended oral language and literacy pedagogies that includes reading aloud informational and literary picturebooks (National Institute for Early Education Research, 2006). To understand how reading pedagogy makes a difference in children's learning, research is needed that describes the daily face-to-face interactions of young children and teachers as they engage in reading and storytelling practices. Literacy events like read alouds are examined for their efficiency in contributing to a student's language development but are rarely scrutinized as complex displays of discourse, identity, storytelling, and narrative that construct students as certain types of readers and members of a reading community. This dissertation describes an ethnographic case study, informed by narrative and discourse analysis theory and methods, which focused on how teachers and students interact with picturebooks in a pre-kindergarten classroom. Data for this study was documented for a period of five and a half months from February 2016 through June 2016. The entire data set included a total of 181 pieces of audio, video, field note, photo, transcript, memo, and interview data all recorded in a Data Log. The research was guided by the following questions: 1. In a specific pre-kindergarten context, what counts as reading? How do children's view of what counts as reading form over time and in various spaces? 2. How does reading aloud illuminate reading as a social practice in this context? How do the participants in classroom read aloud use storytelling in practice? 3. How is storytelling negotiated between the teacher and children (and among the children) to frame readers' identities and belonging? Results suggest that reading aloud invites students and teachers of this classroom to use language influenced by local and global discourse as they navigate storytelling in a way that socially constructs readers and reader identity. Examining the classroom as a case highlighted the ways that space and time were constructed for reading, how teacher's beliefs and (D)discourse framed the children as readers, how a purpose for reading was set up, what reading aloud did for this classroom, what it meant to tell stories, and how emergent reading identities were constructed over time and space. An analysis of four focal students as case studies suggested that definitions of reading transcended traditional views in early education and that the children in this classroom participated in a trajectory of storytelling, demonstrating their understanding of stories, picturebooks, and reading's place in the world, and them as an actor in it. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]