Metafictional strategies and readers’s responses: exploratory research

Abstract

The objective of this research is to discover the level of metaliterary awareness in a group of 4 girls, aged 10, analyzing their readers’ responses. In the first place, seven metafictional picture books whose common feature is that they expose their construction process were selected.

Over a year ​​four discussion sessions were held. Each session began by asking questions about expectations and anticipations; then  some time were allowed so that the girls could read the picture books and then were asked about the narrative strategies of the stories. Besides the girls had to analyze the roles of narrator, writer, illustrator that are evident in these books.

Once the responses were collected, and bearing in mind the previous research, they have been classified into two categories of analysis: comprehension (including anticipation answers, expectations and recognition and inference and corroboration of hypothesis) and interpretation (including interpretive reading by relating it to their reading experiences as well as the avaluation of the text).