Young Children Interpret the Metafictive in Anthony Browne’s Voices in the Park

Voices in the Park(Browne, 1998) was one of nine picture books I used in a study that explored the nature of Grade 1 children’s literary understanding by examining their verbal responses during storybook read-aloud sessions, and their subsequent written, visual arts, and dramatic responses. This article discusses the Grade 1 students’ responses to and understandings of the metafictive devices in Anthony Browne’s picture book. Although researchers and theorists have written about metafiction, a paucity of research has explored elementary students’ literary understandings of and responses to books with metafictive devices. As well as defining metafiction and identifying various metafictive devices described in the literature, this article contextualizes Browne’s work and the children’s responses in a discussion of metafictive textual practices in postmodern and Radical Change literature.