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Is Narrative “Primary”? Some Insights from Kindergarteners' Pretend Readings of Stories and Information Books

This paper involves a consideration of the validity of the common assumption in literacy development that narrative or story is somehow primary—that children's abilities to understand and compose stories precede their capabilities to understand and use non-story, informational written language. An examination of kindergarteners' repeated pretend readings of two stories and two information books was made to gain insights into their strategies in dealing with the distinctive textual properties of the two genres. Two features were specifically addressed: (a) their use of co-referentiality of stories versus the co-classification aspects of information books, and (b) their acquisition of lexical items in the two genres. These analyses indicated that children were just as successful in reenacting the information books as they were the stories. Based on these findings, as well as children's preferences for the information books over the stories, it is argued that our unexamined, unacknowledged narrative as primary ideology needs to be reevaluated.