Exploring episodic affordance and response in children's narratives based on a picture book

This article presents part of a research project where the aim is to investigate six- to seven-year-old children's language use in storytelling. The children's oral texts are based on the picture book Frog, Where Are You? The book consists of a series of episodes that more or less directly point to the plot structure. However, it also contains several narrative detours and sub-plots. The aim of this article is: (1) to identify how the texts alternate between presence and absence of reference to the overall plot structure; and (2) to comment on cases of off-plotline narrative against the background of the interpretive potential represented by the book. Both textual and visual analysis are implemented. The main findings are that there are certain pictures in the book that hardly any of the children narrate in an on-plotline manner and that there are elements in the graphic material that may explain why the children go off-plotline at this point.