Graphic-Narrative Play:
Young Children's Authoring through Drawing and Telling
Susan Wright
National Institute of Education, Singapore
Citation: Wright, S. (2007). Graphic-narrative play:
Young children's authoring through drawing and telling.
International Journal of Education & the Arts, 8(8).
Retrieved [date] from http://www.ijea.org/v8n8/.
Abstract
This arts-based research illustrates how young children engage in 'graphic-narrative play' - a personal fantasy-based experience
depicted on paper - while representing imaginary worlds centered on the topic, what the future will be like. The descriptions
show
how the children not only made representations, but also manipulated these in abstract ways as they created and recreated images,
ideas and feelings. The findings illustrate how the child becomes a cast of one, taking on multiple roles (i.e., artist,
author,
director, scripter, performer and narrator) and selecting when and how to play with all the available voices offered through the
multimodal media - drawing, 'telling', dramatization, expressive sound effects, gesture and movement. These multiple texts involved
embodied authoring - layers of visual and physical action, character development, plot scheme, scenery and running narrative
working
in harmony, simultaneously. Children's open-ended construction of meaning surfaced content that reflected universal story themes such
as good-evil and capturing-defending, and their voices often were powerful, humorous, philosophical and reflective. Yet the
sequencing of events did not necessarily follow linear structures - instead, the children worked within fluid structures.
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