"Whose line is it anyway?" : how students make sense of postmodern picture books with matefictive devices

"Literacy in the 21st Century means thinking critically, making sense of a bombardment of media sources, negotiating multiple digital literacies, and making choices about what to read and how to go about reading it." (Anstey, 2002, p.447) Postmodern picture books can be classified as a sub-genre of picture books in which the reader is not simply reading an author's recount of the story but by using metafictive devices such as: non-linearity, multiple narratives, indeterminacy, symbolic representation, interesting illustrative techniques and create design and layout, the reader is invited to co-create the text with the author. the interplay between text and image is very important and the reader is required to fill in the gaps in order to make sense of the story. These books encourage students to think critically, require students to be active creators of the story rather than passive observers. This study explores the responses of a group of grade 6 students to the postmodern picture books "Voices in the Park" by Anthony Browne, and the meaning-making strategies the readers employ to understand this story. I looked first, at the student's reactions to the metafictive devices present in this book, and then I looked at how they employed meaning-making strategies to comprehend the story.Education, Faculty ofLanguage and Literacy Education (LLED), Department ofUnreviewedGraduat