ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the process of meaning-making more deeply, considering the reading comprehension strategies that the children use but also setting these dialogic transactions between text and readers in the context of creative/divergent and critical/convergent thinking. Drawing all of the strategies together and mapping them as critical or creative thinking supports the notion of opening a dialogic space for meaning-making through asking questions and making hypotheses, and closing it through seeking resolutions and explanations. The questions that the dialogic readers ask illuminate the pivotal role that 'possibility thinking' and the positing of ideas and suggestions take in the co-construction of meaning of visual texts. The strategies are also potentially indicated through specific linguistic markers that are evident in the children's talk. The comprehension strategies the children use are closely tied to the affordances of the metaphorical dialogic space of possibility, as they enable the co-construction of meaning to follow different lines of enquiry based on the negotiation of provisional meanings.
