A palimpsest of stories: Young children's construction of intertextual links among fairytale variants

Abstract

In this study, children in a combined first/second grade responded to readalouds of five variants (constituting a text set) of the Rapunzel story. The goal of the study was (1) to describe richly the variety of intertextual links made by the children as they listened to each variant in turn; and (2) to trace the development of their schema for the tale. Seven types of intertextual connections were identified. Children's responses became increasingly sophisticated as they moved from (1) understanding the story through personal associations; (2) understanding the similarities and differences between stories; (3) testing schemata; (4) consolidating what they had learned into a solid schema; and (5) applying this knowledge to a variant that challenged their developed schema, and suggesting their own variants. The findings were consolidated into a grounded theory of young children's schema‐building for traditional stories, through their use of personal, text‐to‐text, and analytic responses.