This article explores the potential for engaging 7 and 8-year-old school pupils in performative literature interpretation through process drama. Inspired by new materialism and affect theory, we focus on how literature interpretations come into being in dramatic fiction, and on how these becoming interpretations merge with the classroom. The study…

What is the hold of literature on a reader's imagination, on my imagination? I remember many hours spent with books in a kind of romantic entanglement, and heartful obsession, and joyful reverie. I certainly remember being lost with words, lost in enthusiastic abandonment. I loved the sounds of words, and the images they conjured, and the…

In this qualitative study, the author explores how young readers build literary understanding through performative responses in picturebook read-alouds. Performative responses allow children to create and express meaning in ways that go beyond talk and that engage their creativity and imagination. They include a variety of modalities, such as…

While visiting the classroom of an English teacher on campus, the author noticed a large number of literature textbooks that were being replaced with a newer edition. In this article, she describes a project, which was inspired by these discarded literature textbooks, designed to introduce students to an art form based on ideas rather than…

Maintains that children's books such as "The Secret Garden" can have a strong influence on one's life. Such books offer emotionally satisfying adventures and serve as the touchstones by which we measure all literary experience. (BB)

Discusses the concepts of play and imagination and how these shape personal development and the knowledge gained through experience with reading and writing. (SRT)