ABSTRACT
Reading is often conceptualized as cognitive experience in which readers interact with text to extract authors’ meanings. In this chapter, we interrogate this view arguing that deep comprehending is more accurately and richly described as imaginative, dialogic, co-authoring activity of an agentive self, during which readers construct intricate intersubjective webs of relationships across and within the times and spaces of text worlds. In this way, the genesis and consequences of comprehending are positioned as relational. To illustrate this, we present two case analyses, the first, a young child’s wordless book reading and the second, an older student’s image-aided picturebook retelling.
