Dialogic Readers: Children talking and thinking together about visual texts celebrates the sophisticated and dynamic discussions that primary-aged children can have as they talk together to make meaning from a variety of texts, and it highlights the potential for talk between readers as a tool for critical and creative thinking. It proposes a new dialogic theory of reading comprehension that incorporates multi-modal media and adds further weight to the argument that talk as a tool for learning should form a central part of primary classroom learning and teaching.

The book explores:

• the language of co-construction

• children’s critical and creative responses to text

• the dialogic transaction between text and readers

• the use of language as a tool for creating a social cohesion between readers.

This significant work is aimed at educational lecturers, researchers and students who want to explore an expanded notion of reading comprehension in the twenty-first century, realizing how opportunities for children thinking creatively together might transform the potential for learning in the classroom. It provides a framework for analyzing co-constructive talk with suggestions for promoting children’s critical and creative thinking.