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Young children, wordless picturebooks, and inferencing

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Abstract

During a study in a Kindergarten classroom, wordless and almost wordless picturebooks were presented as aesthetic objects that are read for pleasure, reward slow looking, and require engagement in significant semiotic work. Instruction about and adult mediation of picturebooks throughout the research communicated to the children that elements of visual art, design, and layout in picturebook artwork are fundamental to meaning-making with this format of literature. One component of the research procedures involved the students participating in small group interactive discussion sessions of six almost wordless picturebooks. Content analysis of transcript excerpts from the discussions of one picturebook revealed the Kindergarten children generated inferences about characters’ goals, actions, states, activities, emotions, and utterances, as well as made place, object, causal antecedents, and causal consequences inferences. Furthermore, analyses of the transcripts revealed how inference generation was central to the children’s meaning-making during their transactions with an almost wordless picturebook. The findings contribute to the limited scholarship on Kindergarten students’ inferences and interpretations about elements of artwork, design, and layout in wordless and almost wordless picturebooks, and overall, add to the literature on young children’s inferential thinking.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Victoria, Box 1700 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 2Y2, Canada

    Sylvia Pantaleo

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  1. Sylvia Pantaleo
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Correspondence to Sylvia Pantaleo.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

Approval was granted by the University of Victoria Human Research Ethics Board (#11–005). All procedures in the study that involved human participants were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Victoria.

Consent to participate

As per the University of Victoria Human Research Ethics Board requirements, informed consent was granted by the School District, the Principal, the Classroom Teacher, and the Parents/Guardians.

Conflict of interest

I am a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy.

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Pantaleo, S. Young children, wordless picturebooks, and inferencing. AJLL 47, 125–142 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44020-023-00053-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44020-023-00053-3

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