Reading as a transaction of meaning making

In this chapter I explore the idea of dialogic readers who are active, creative, collaborative respondents to both the narratives that they read and to each other as co-readers (Maine, 2015). The chapter illustrates just how dialogic primary-aged children can be as they encounter texts together and how different multimodal reading contexts can promote their engagement. Coming from a sociocultural perspective that stresses inter-subjectivity and the construction of meaning in interaction (Kumpulainen & Wray, 2002), readers, texts and the ‘activity’ of different reading events themselves are highlighted (Snow, 2002).