Networking around The Waterhole andother tales: the importance of relationshipsamong texts for reading and relatedinstructionPauline Harris and Barbara McKenzie

Abstract

This article explores ways in which children’s picturebooks form networks of relationships, and theirimplications for readers and classroom teachers. Inthis exploration, reading is seen to involve makingconnections within and beyond the text at hand. Theseconnections, evoked differently across readers, shapereaders’ interpretations of text. Many possible mean-ings may arise from just one text, reinforcing the ideathat no single correct meaning resides in a text. Thisarticle demonstrates tools for exploring textual con-nections with readers, and the value of such explora-tions for opening-up reader interpretations of a text.

Key words: children’s picture books, interpretingchildren’s texts, classroom strategies for talking abouttexts, intertextuality, critical literacy

Introduction

A class was reading Do Not Go Around the Edges(Utemorrah and Torres, 1990). This children’s picturebook interweaves the autobiography of Daisy, anAustralian Aboriginal woman, with a series of poemsexpressing her views about her life, with indigenouspaintings. As class members read and talked theirway through this text, they became disgruntled andcomplained, ‘‘How do we read this?’’. Sometimes wehear children asking similar questions that we hopemight be springboards to further exploring texts.However, this class was not a primary school class,but a class of student teachers in our University’sPrimary and Early Childhood Preservice TeacherEducation programme.

Among our student teachers, we were findingresistance to several children’s picture books, espe-cially those stretching conventional structures andthemes, like ‘Edges’. Through its intricate design,‘Edges’ creates interpretive possibilities that may berealised if the reader reaches beyond the text andconsiders the other texts that it incorporates. Instead,our resistant students judged ‘Edges’ to be ‘too hard’and claimed that children ‘wouldn’t get it’. Even after

persevering with such texts, many decided: ‘‘But Iwouldn’t use it with children in my class’’.

We found these reactions amongst our students limit-ing, both for themselves, and for the children theywould teach. These reactions resonated with a pre-vious study we had made of teacher–class interactionsaround texts (Harris, Trezise and Winser, 2002), whichrevealed how interpretations of the text under focuswere complicated by the text’s convergence with othertexts and experiences. While teachers sought links toother texts and experiences, they could not alwaysrecognise and orchestrate children’s multifarious con-nections; or children’s responses did not always agreewith their teachers’ instructional plans. In theseinstances, children’s responses were most often re-jected. These teachers were in a similar bind to ourstudent teachers when trying to interpret and buildmeaning from multiple sources.

Furthermore, when children’s associations did notmatch their teacher’s instructional plan, or were notrecognised and acknowledged by their teacher, theirlines of meaning were not validated. While this mayseem inevitable on occasion, this failure to validatechildren’s ideas becomes problematic when it occurson a continuing basis. Children become alienated fromthe process of making meaning in ways that makesense to them. When this alienation occurs, childrenare often seen to engage instead in the business ofguessing what is inside their teacher’s head, ratherthan thinking about what is inside their own heads.

Seeking to open student teachers’ minds to possibi-lities in children’s texts and in children’s heads, weadopted an approach to our classes that involvedexploration of how texts form networks of relation-ships that create many interpretive possibilities forreaders. We sought to give student teachers tools formaking connections that had eluded them; connec-tions that also helped them to recognise and supportconnections made by children in classrooms. In sodoing, we hoped to help our students find new depthsof interpretations in children’s texts that they mightotherwise fail to perceive or reject. One student teacher

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encapsulated their collective and enthusiastic uptakeof our approach: ‘‘You’re making us think about booksin ways we hadn’t seen before’’.

With these outcomes in mind, we share our frameworkfor exploring networks of relationships in children’stexts, and offer implications for readers and classroomteachers.

Framework for exploring networks ofrelationships in children’s texts

Our approach was framed by theories of intertextual-ity, whereby all texts are seen to connect with othertexts in explicit or implicit ways (Barthes, 1988;Kristeva, 1984) – such as connections between ‘Edges’and other autobiographies, poetry anthologies, indi-genous art and texts about Australian Aboriginalcultures. Connections in a text rest not only in the textbut also in the reader, in terms of the networks of textsin which s/he has been immersed and which s/he candetect in the text. The reader ideally recognisesconnections in the text, and also draws on her or hisown and makes judgements on the relevance andsignificance of these connections (Barthes, 1988).

Readers’ intertextual backgrounds provide resourcesfor engaging with texts, even amongst young children(Crawford and Hade, 2000). For example, in an earlierstudy (Harris et al. 2002), one child, Cathy, wholistened to bedtime nursery rhymes, on hearing herteacher read a rhyming spell from the picture bookMeg’s Eggs (Nicoll and Pienkowski, 1975), instantlylikened the spell to a ‘rock-a-bye’ because of how itsounded. Unfortunately, not detecting the link, herteacher rejoined, ‘‘It doesn’t sound like anything thatwould put me to sleep’’ and moved on.

In classrooms, the challenge for teachers can be torecognise those resources on which children call,comprising as they do a vast range of texts and acrossvarious media (Harris et al. 2002; Dyson, 1993). Thechildren themselves are not always aware of the originsof their connections. For example, in Crawford andHade’s (2000) study, Laura made connections betweenimages in a picture book and the Grand Canyon and aGreek Temple, yet was unable to explain why she madethose connections. Such can be the elusive and oftenunconscious nature of intertextuality (Kristeva, 1984).

Texts connect with other texts in various ways, both intexts and in readers. Drawing on the work of Genette(1992, 1997, 1998) and Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman-Lewis (1992), Figure 1 identifies five ways in whichtexts form networks of relationships. Genette, in hisclassification, coined the term ‘transtextuality’, underwhich the term ‘intertextuality’ takes on a specificcategorical meaning, along with four other categories.

This classification provides a conceptual structure forrecognising and articulating how texts form networksof relationships and create interpretive possibilities.We came to use this structure with our studentteachers, to promote the exploration of possibilities intexts. While the five categories provided a usefulframework for our explorations, we found them fluidand overlapping, rendering reading an intriguing andhighly interactive venture for our student teachers.

Below, we illustrate how we harnessed transtextualityto explore student teachers’ interpretations and iden-tify influences in these. We did so across our first,second and third language and literacy subjects in ourPrimary and Early Childhood programmes of InitialTeacher Education. We used these explorations tofurther develop students’ understanding about read-ing and texts in tutorial classes of 25 student teachers.

Navigating pathways of interpretationaround The Waterhole

What follows is an account of one such sharedexploration, with a Literacy tutorial of 25 first-yearstudents, centred on The Waterhole (Base, 2001). Itillustrates how networks of relationships among textscreate interpretive possibilities. Portraying what hap-pens to animal life when a waterhole dries up, thisbook weaves meaning from connections within andbeyond itself, as overviewed in Figure 1 (p. 33).

Drawing on knowledge of our student teachers, wepredicted appropriately that there would be enough inthe book with which students could connect and thatthey would tolerate and even enjoy its ambiguities. Wehoped then to use insights from this experience torevisit other texts that they previously had resisted.Extracts from our interactions are presented toillustrate how readers manoeuvre within and acrosstexts to meet a text’s interpretive challenges. Ourexamples are not intended to convey a definitiveinterpretation of The Waterhole, nor to direct specificallyhow it should be read or discussed.

We approached the book’s cover through a transtex-tual lens by inviting our students to explore, interpretand make connections with its elements, and tocorroborate or challenge one another’s responses. Weencouraged divergent perspectives and avoided work-ing towards group consensus that might suppressindividual insights. In these ways, we demonstratedthat a book’s cover is a threshold that a reader is invitedto interpret and step across if induced to read on(Genette, 1997).

A number of the student teachers were struck by thefront cover’s vivid illustration of animals around awaterhole. This illustration is framed by a sepia-coloured border showing numerals alternating with

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animals, e.g., ‘1’ followed by a pictured rhinoceros,followed by ‘2’, followed by a pictured tiger. Welingered over the front cover, allowing students tocontemplate and vocalise their thoughts. For example,a student teacher pointed to the border and asked,‘‘Why are those animals there?’’. This question alertedothers to numerals also in the border, which provided aclue to the counting-book genre on which Waterholedraws.

The title and the author’s name appear at the top ofthe main illustration, with a cartoon-like frog leapingover them. Graeme Base’s name resonated withseveral student teachers, so we asked, ‘‘What mightyou expect of this book?’’. In response, they talkedabout intricate artwork, animals, riddles, puzzlesand complex narratives. They commented on thevarious connections they were making ‘‘all over theplace’’, and how these connections influenced their

How link is mCategory ade The Waterhole (Base, 2001)

Paratextual links

– between a main text and

its surrounding elements

Book covers; end papers; title pages;

contents pages; indexes;

bibliographic details; logos;

promotional blurbs; trademarks

Cover and title page present riddles

and puzzles which invite

interrogation of what the main text

might be about

Implications of paratextual links for readers: What information is presented in a text’s surrounds, and how,

contributes to reader expectations, interpretations, and motivation.

Intratextual links

– within a text between its

parts

Relationships between words and

pictures; between captions and

diagrams; between parts in a written

or visual text

Intricate links among illustrations,

borders and various aspects of

written text create many layers of

meaning

Implications of intratextual links for readers: Readers are drawn into interplay within texts that may anchor

particular meanings or create many interpretive possibilities.

Intertextual links

– between a text and

other texts

Quotation; allusion; pastiche; implicit

integration of other sources;

participation in common themes

Alludes to other counting books,

animal books, art books and travel

books

Implications of intertextual links for readers: What and how texts call on other texts shape reader

interpretations, as do a reader’s own textual encounters and life experiences.

Architextual links

– between single texts and

broader genres

Participation in conventions of

particular genres

Draws on counting book, narrative

and riddle genres

Implications of architextual links for readers: Genres contribute to establishing purpose and macro-

structures in texts, which build pathways for readers to construct meaning.

Hypotextual links

– between a text and

another text or genre that

it transforms

Parodies; sequels; translations;

pastiche; retellings; adaptations;

transformations in different media

Blurs boundaries among genres to

seamlessly combine them in one text

Implications of hypotextual links for readers: If familiar with original text or genre, readers may reflect on

what has been changed and how, why, and to what effect.

Figure 1: Ways in which texts form networks of relationships

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expectations. Indeed, their connections took them onvarious transtextual routes, as they worked paratex-tually with the front cover to anticipate the main text;connected intertextually with other texts to establishand review expectations; and reached architextuallyinto broader genres that they might associate withthis text.

Still on the front cover, some puzzled over the frog andthe way it was portrayed differently from the otheranimals. One student teacher called on intertextualknowledge about the use of frogs as a barometer ofwater quality and drought. Another likened the frog tocanaries used in the mine to sniff out methane gas.

Turning to the back cover, we considered the title motifrepeated from the front, and its intratextual link to theriddle beneath it:

‘‘Down to the secret waterhole the animals all come,As seasons bring forth drought and flood, they gather

there as one.United in their common need, their numbers swell to ten,But hidden deep amongst the trees lie ten times that

again!’’

This riddle set up an enigmatic challenge for the readerto find the text’s secret animals. ‘‘What kind of text isthis?’’ continued to be an architextual question on thestudent teachers’ lips, as they tried to locate the text interms of a broader genre such as narrative or puzzle.

We then considered a blurb below the riddle, whichdescribes The Waterhole as ‘‘an ingenious fusion ofcounting book, puzzle book, storybook and art book’’.Exploring this architextual conglomerate, studentswondered how the different genres might cometogether: Would it be a visual feast like Animalia (Base,1993)? Perhaps a mystery like The Eleventh Hour (Base,1993)? Their disequilibrium provided opportunity toreflect on why identifying a book’s genre might beimportant for the reader – how genre shapes inter-pretive possibilities by allowing readers to anticipatetext structures and purposes.

Lastly, we considered a cartoon image of a frog in atropical shirt and gazing at the reader. Studentscontemplated the intratextual relationship betweenthis frog and the leaping frog in the tile motif, asking‘‘Is it the same frog?’’, while paratextually theyinterrogated its relevance to the text between thecovers – ’’What does the frog mean?’’.

Still playing on the text’s threshold, we turned to thetitle page. Title motif, riddle and shirt-clad frog arerepeated. The frog’s image now includes a waterhole,with concentric page cuts indicating a shrinkingwaterhole. This new feature, noted by students,heralds a pattern in the main text, whereby the cutcircles signify the gradual evaporation of the waterholewith each turn of the page.

The main text begins with a double-page spread ofinterwoven elements that invite the reader to makeconnections and return to confirm emerging patterns.The main illustration shows a rhinoceros at thewaterhole. The frog in the tropical shirt is nearby, asare other frogs, drawn in similar cartoon fashion.Bordering top and lower edges of the page are animalssilhouetted in a line against a natural landscape, eachanimal minutely labelled. The written text consists of anumeral ‘1’, rendered in a texture resembling the hideof the rhinoceros, followed by the words: ‘‘One Rhinodrinking at the waterhole. ‘Snort, splosh!’ (Mmm,delicious!)’’.

As we proceeded, we gave the student teachers time tomove around their own transtextual space, interpret-ing what they saw and heard. As they worked togetherto create a collective understanding, talking, sharing,and even challenging one another’s ideas, they begannoticing and enthusiastically remarking on the book’sintratextual patterns: the counting sequence, with thenumerals rendered in the same body covering as themain featured animal, the diminishing waterhole,the silhouetted, labelled animals in the borders, andthe featured landmarks in the upper left-hand corner(all these belonging to the same place as the featuredanimal, with the location in the border possiblysignifying their threatened or extinct condition), andthe camouflaged animals for readers to discover as thebook’s ‘riddle’.

The drought peaked with all the animals vanishing.Then rain fell and formed a puddle, resembling theworld. All the animals returned to the waterhole. Seeingthe world, some of the student teachers grasped theglobal implications of the text’s message. Now, theywanted to go back to the beginning to peel back morelayers of meaning and to contemplate the hypotextualinnovation of the book – what made the book ‘different’,how the author had worked his ‘magic’, and how thebook ‘got them in’ as a consequence.

Harnessing this energy, we continued our transtex-tual forays into other picture books in followingweeks. Below, we sample some of these excursions, tohighlight insights into the connectedness of texts and todeclare the significance for readers and teachers.

Other insights about networks ofrelationships and their importance

We want to be clear that we are not advocating that ourapproach based on transtextuality is the only approachfor opening students’ minds to how texts function, andthe consequences for readers as they work withinterpretive possibilities. It did, however, enable us todemonstrate how texts draw on various connectionsthat shape readers’ interpretations. In bringing theseconnections to the surface and validating them, we

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found we empowered our students to take control oftheir own interpretations, while recognising alterna-tive viewpoints. A text provides clues and suggestspathways; but it is readers who must detect andinterpret those clues, and decide what information issalient to their interpretations.

Our talk about paratextuality alerted students to cluesin book conventions. While previously, students wouldflip past endpapers, these elements now figured inframing possible interpretations. For example, oncoming upon The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle,1969), many stopped to consider its endpapers.Initially, the multi-coloured collage of shapes dottedwith white circles puzzled them. On revisiting theendpapers once they’d read and viewed the text, weasked them to rethink their ideas about them. Theynow interpreted the white circles as signifying holesmade by the caterpillar as it chomped its way throughfood, while the colours symbolised the food it ate andthe butterfly it became.

The idea of endpapers as informative yet ambiguousled us to talk about those in The Great Bear (Gleeson andGreder, 1999). Both front and back papers depictconstellations in the northern sky. The front papers,however, do not include the bear-like constellationcalled ‘Ursa Major’ (great bear), whereas the backpapers do. This difference holds a critical key tointerpreting the text’s ambiguous end. The narrativechronicles the life of a captive dancing bear and thetorments it suffers. The night comes when the tormentbecomes too great for the bear, and he escapes thecircus, climbs to the top of a tall building, and leaps off.Instead of falling down, he soars up into the sky. Thestarry sky at that point is rendered in a stylereminiscent of Van Gogh. What might this associationsignify? What happened to the bear? The addition ofUrsa Major in the back endpapers carries the clearimplication for all with the relevant astronomicalknowledge that the bear ascended to the skies wherehe formed a stellar constellation – an interpretationthat relies on the reader making that intertextualassociation.

Another key insight that emerged among our studentteachers was the notion that readers make choicesabout what connections to make and emphasise withinand beyond the text. This insight emerged when werevisited Do Not Go Around the Edges (Utemorrah andTorres 1990, referred to at the beginning of this paper).While the rest of her peers continued to struggle, one ofour students, Margaret, who had an AustralianAboriginal background (albeit a different tribal back-ground from that of the book’s author), unlocked someof the text’s symbolic meanings. Her background gaveMargaret access to a network of texts relevant tointerpreting this book. As she shared her interpreta-tions with her peers, she chose aspects of that networkto interpret the book’s possible meanings – such asconventions of visual symbolism in indigenous art in

her own tribal setting – while acknowledging tribalvariations and her own personal innovations in herown art.

We used Margaret’s example to reveal that whatreaders choose to highlight in their interpretations is aproduct of both personal judgement (Scholes, 1975) andcultural context (Luke and Freebody, 1999). And so weunderlined the idea that readers have a crucial role toplay in choosing and constructing meaning, drawingon their experiences with vast and evolving networksof texts. We brought Scholes’ long-standing words tobear on our reflections; that reading is like shuttling‘‘back and forth between the language of the work anda network of contexts that are not in the work but areessential for its realization’’ (Scholes 1975, p. 147).

From that point, we talked about the importance ofallowing children in classrooms to share and exploreone another’s perspectives, to facilitate their ‘shuttling’processes. For example, we revisited Voices in the Park(Browne, 1999), a book the student teachers hadpreviously resisted. This time, however, a groupvolunteered to analyse the text. What they found andshared with the rest of the class opened all our mindsfurther to the possibilities that lurk in books forchildren. Previously they had been puzzled by therecurring motif of a hat that appeared surreally in thepark’s landscape and on the head of an oppressivemother. In this early encounter, what students could notunderstand, they had rejected. Now, with a differentmindset that sought out connections, they perseveredwith the text and unearthed a link to The Little Prince (deSaint-Exupery, 1974). One student’s familiarity withthat book – specifically with the idea of the ambiguity ofthis image, that from an adult’s perspective, a picture ofa hat might signify just that, a hat but from a child’sperspective, the same picture might be construed as aboa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant –helped students through architextual procedures tounlock possible discourses behind ‘Voices’ aboutdivergent adult and child perspectives.

Revisiting books that student teachers had previouslyrejected, we talked about how readers’ experiencesshape their uptake of texts. We shared Davies’ research(1989) on young children’s responses to The Paper BagPrincess (Munsch and Martchenko, 1980), a fairy-taleparody where a princess rescues her prince, only toreject him and go off happily into the sunset on herown. Children, immersed in traditional fairy tales likeCinderella, mostly rejected the ending of the story, andinstead upheld traditional gender roles and relation-ships. Along the way, they each had selected certainaspects of the text that supported their interpretations.Davies’ finding resonated with the student teachers asthey reflected on their own literary diets and how theseinfluenced their interpretations.

These student teachers also connected their literacydiets to their perceptions of children’s capabilities as

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meaning-makers. We shared Graham’s recount (1990)of a young child’s response to Gorilla (Browne, 1983),which tells the story of Hannah and the loneliness sheexperiences in her relationship with her father, apreoccupied and distant figure. Specifically, in Gra-ham’s account, the picture of Hannah standing by herfather as he works at his desk provoked a responsefrom a young child that Hannah ‘‘was sucking the toprail of the chair and jutting it with her teeth becauseshe’s fretful about her father not noticing her’’.

Our student teachers took up this response andexplored the book further. Now they noticed Browne’srecurring use of bars in the book – for example, bars ofa bed head and bars suggested in the division of someillustrations. Some interpreted these images in terms ofisolation and alienation. Others made intertextual linksto Browne’s Zoo (1994), and the use of bars and dividedimagery to portray the isolation and despair of cagedanimals. We delved into discourses behind these texts,and the discourses we bring as individual readers.Sparked by one child’s insights, we discussed therichness of meaning-making that can be found whensharing insights among a class of children.

Implications for classroom teachers

These transtextual excursions into children’s textshave some important implications for classroomteachers. One concerns the way we think about readingas a meaning-making process. Within our framework,reading involves shuttling around vast networks oftexts to make meaning. The categories of transtextual-ity that framed our approach portray possible routesfor readers for navigating these networks, routes wesaw students take when discussing The Waterhole. Thisshuttling may happen with varying degrees ofconscious awareness.

Transtextuality, we have seen, helps readers to articu-late, model and guide the shuttling process as theymake meaning. In this framework, shuttling may bedemonstrated as navigating pathways either amongelements within a text (intratextuality), or between themain text and its surrounding elements (paratextual-ity), or between the text and other texts across differentmedia and including lived experiences (intertextual-ity), or even between the text and broader genres anddiscourses of which the text is representative (archi-textuality), and which in some cases the text disrupts(hypotextuality).

Barthes (1988) wrote that coherence of meaning lies notjust with the text, but also with the reader. If we acceptthis premise about reading, then we find that it is notonly what we do in the name of teaching reading, butalso how we do it, that is critical. For example, talkingwith children about texts is commonplace in class-rooms. It is a matter, however, of approaching those

interactions with an open mind and a divergent line ofquestioning that involves exploring children’s viewsand allows them to support or challenge one another’sideas. For, as we had previously found (Harris, Treziseand Winser, 2002), the quest for meaning can be all tooreadily shut down when not approached this way.

While not advocating explicit lessons in transtextual-ity, we believe it is important to talk about ways inwhich texts are connected to one another, especiallywith concrete demonstrations of actual texts. Ideas thatinvolve fairly well-established activities in classrooms,which could be approached through a transtextuallens, include:

� exploring book covers, title pages and endpapersmore fully, not just as book conventions but asintegral elements that frame expectations andprovide clues before and after reading a text. Thisparatextual involvement may also see childrenmaking books of their own, including the designof covers, title pages and endpapers;

� dramatising texts, to allow readers to get inside thetext and explore their own interpretations morefully. This could extend to different groups per-forming their own dramatisations of the same text,to compare interpretations and highlight the factthat there are many different ways a text may beread. This may provide avenues for showing howother texts, genres and discourses shape how weread a text;

� engaging children with text innovations, to explorethe realm of hypotextuality. Children can be invitedto reflect on what has been changed from one text tothe next, the effect of that change, and what theythink about that change. Children could be en-gaged in text innovations of their own, visually,orally, in writing or as drama;

� asking children to visualise their own illustrationswhile listening to a picture book being read, thencomparing their images to those in the book.Children may be invited to explore how illustra-tions and their intratextual relationship with whatelse is in a text shape their interpretations andreflect their own experiences and worldviews.

We believe that the kind of reading environment wecreate in classrooms is important. We advocate anenvironment where children’s questions are encour-aged, their ideas acknowledged and validated, andtexts from their home and community settings find aplace alongside a teacher’s choices.

As we found with our student teachers, knowing aboutnetworks of relationships among texts not only equipsreaders with tools of interpretation, but also gives themthe courage of their own convictions when exploringtheir own interpretations. The student teachers learnedto be secure in the knowledge that there are manydifferent ways a text can be interpreted, which may allbe valid, and may all be open to challenge. So it is

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important that, as readers, children are made to feelcomfortable to disagree with one another and evenwith the teacher when it comes to interpreting texts.

If as teachers we are prepared to explore children’sinterpretations, and the networks of texts and experi-ences that shape them, then we may see that a child isfunctioning well as a meaning-maker, where otherwisewe might have deemed their input irrelevant – as inour earlier example of Cathy’s ‘Like a rock-a-bye’. Howdo you imagine Cathy felt when her teacher rejectedher connection between a spell and nursery rhymes?On the other hand, how did our student teachers feelwhen they were given scope to peel back the layers ofmeaning in texts, and given tools not only for makingconnections, but also for articulating, reasoning anddiscussing these? In the words of one excited studentteacher, ‘‘If we feel like this, imagine how children inour classrooms would feel’’.

References

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CRAWFORD, P. A. and HADE, D. D. (2000) Inside the picture book,outside the frame: semiotics and the reading of wordless picturebooks. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 15.1, pp. 66–80.

DAVIES, B. (1989) Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales: Preschool childrenand gender. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

DYSON, A. H. (1993) Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in anUrban Primary School. New York: Teachers College Press.

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STAM, R., BURGOYNE, R. and FLITTERMAN-LEWIS, S. (1992) NewVocabularies in Film Semiotics. London: Routledge.

Children’s texts

BASE, G. (1987) Animalia. South Yarra, Vic: Viking O’Neil.BASE, G. (1989) The Eleventh Hour. Ringwood, Vic: Puffin.BASE, G. (2001) The Waterhole. London: Penguin Books.BROWNE, A. (1983) Gorilla. London: Julia Macrae Books.BROWNE, A. (1994) Zoo. Sydney: Red Fox.BROWNE, A. (1999) Voices in the Park. London: Transworld.CARLE, E. (1969) The Very Hungry Caterpillar. London: Hamish

Hamilton.DE SAINT-EXUPERY, A. (1974) The Little Prince. London: Pan books.GLEESON, L. and GREDER, A. (1999) The Great Bear. Gosford, NSW:

Scholastic Books.MUNSCH, R. and Marchenko, M. (1980) The Paper Bag Princess.

Toronto: Annick Press.NICOLL, H. and PIENKOWSKI, J. (1975) Meg’s Eggs. Middlesex:

Puffin.UTEMORRAH, D. and TORRES, P. (1990) Do Not Go Around the

Edges. Broome: Magabala.

CONTACT THE AUTHORS:Dr Pauline Harris, Faculty of Education, Univer-sity of Wollongong, Australia.e-mail: pharris@uow.edu.auBarbra McKenzie, Faculty of Education, Univer-sity of Wollongong, Australia.e-mail: barbra_mckenzie@uow.edu.au

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