The reading process and reading development have been addressed by researchers for decades. As a result we know much about what reading is and how it happens. However, less is known about how reading influences other aspects of children’s development, specifically the development of social imagination. To address this, we examined the narrative produced by one child during wordless picture book reading using a conceptually derived coding scheme to identify instances of social imagination. We asked: Is children’s use of social imagination visible in wordless book reading, and if so, what does it look like and how might it give us a more detailed in-process view of the reader–text transaction? Results suggest that the use of social imagination is observable in wordless book reading and that it is an integral part of the comprehension of stories. From this we posit that through vicarious engagement with others, the process of reading may influence the relational capacity for social imagination.
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