CHILDREN'S INTERPRETATIONS OF WORDLESS PICTURE BOOKS

Twelve kindergarten children and twelve children from grades two, four, and six were asked to read a wordless picture book. The children were considered by their teachers to be of average reading ability. Two books were used in this study with six (three boys, three girls) children of each grade reading one book and the same number reading the other book. The children's responses were taped; the only prompting that the children received was help in reading the first page of the story which was not included in this study. The childrens responses were evaluated to determine if the grade of a child, the child's sex, or the book read might influence the child's reading of a wordless picture book. Each child's performance was evaluated: to determine if he correctly told the main action of each picture, to count the number of interpretive statements he made and if they were correct, to count the number of descriptive words he used and to measure how many minutes he took to read the story.;Based on the results of this study several conclusions were made. Children in higher grades appear more successful in telling the main action of pictures, neither the sex of the child nor the book read influences the ability to tell the main action of the pictures. Girls make significantly more statements than boys. Children in the higher grades are significantly more correct with their interpretations; children who read one of the books showed greater correctness in their statements than children who read the other book. Children of different grades do not use significantly more descriptive words in interpreting wordless picture books, and girls use significantly more descriptive words than boys. With each higher grade children take less time to read wordless stories.