To understand difficulties in early literacy most research has focused on print
related knowledge. Knowing about print, however, is only one aspect of reading and
may neglect how successful early readers also develop capacities to enter the text
world and make sense of it through a personal, relational experience. To explore
this other aspect of early literacy I examined the wordless picture book readings of
18 children aged 5 and 6 prior to their ability to decode print. Analyses imply that
the development of ‘self that reads’ might be described as a
process of movement along a continuum over which a complex, flexible, dialogic
self-system develops and which then influences the kind and amount of transactional
relationship a reader has with a text. Acknowledging the importance of the
developing ‘self that reads’ during childhood may deepen
definitions of emergent literacy and broaden our approaches to young readers.
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