ABSTRACT
Although the meaning and function of the personal pronoun I are not easily acquired, young children are confronted with picturebooks containing fi rstperson narratives at an early age. Thus, not only the question arises how it is possible for children to understand those narratives, but also the question how they relate them to the respective pictures. In our chapter, we will focus on both questions. Our background is linguistics, particularly the study of child language. We believe that the acquisition of literary competence, conceived of as the ability to understand or to produce literature, is intimately connected with language acquisition. If we are right, it is necessary to refl ect on the interaction of both.
