ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the discursive construction of the consequences of literacy, specifically of the cultural logic prefigured in 'doing' narrative in an early childhood writing lesson. There is ample advocacy of the centrality of narrative to the educational enterprise. This ranges from claims about the centrality of 'story-form' as a developmentally appropriate and ontologically significant genre for classroom talk, reading and writing, to the romanticist belief in the universal power of literature to enhance 'personal growth' at all stages of literacy learning. Families of textual practices are built in classroom language games played by teachers and students. There what counts as reading and writing is procedurally constructed for students. The teacher's introduction cues up what for the children is apparently a familiar language game: how to 'do' and 'make' a story through talk. The teacher states at the onset a framework for proceeding: she is the author, and the students are apprentices.
