Linguistics and Education 25 (2014) 12–23 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Linguistics and Education j ourna l ho me pa g e: www.elsevier.com/locate/linged A semiotic perspective on reading picture books: The case of Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse Bobbie Kabuto * Elementary and Early Childhood Department, Queens College, CUNY, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11367, United States a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Available online 12 December 2013 Keywords: Semiotic Oral reading Reading comprehension a b s t r a c t This article integrates semiotic and socio-psycholinguistic theories to problematize the definition of reading as the conscious or unconscious recall of words as a prerequisite for comprehension. Through an examination of the repeated miscue of the verb wind and the adjective wind-up in Lionni’s picture book Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse, this article will address (1) how some readers, although they may read with accuracy, can lack a satisfactory understanding of what they have read, and (2) how some readers who do not read accurately are nevertheless able to demonstrate story comprehension. The article next compares two readers to contend that reading involves semiotic work as readers select from the semiotic resources available to them in the process of constructing meaning. In addition, this article will explore the implications of this study for educators. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The ability to read requires situated, cognitive work, as readers use their knowledge of language and their experiences of the world to negotiate and construct meaning from texts, both written and visual. While the current research on reading does not argue this point, it does present it from multiple, and sometimes competing, fields of thought ranging from behaviorism to sociolinguistics, cognitive science, and linguistic anthropology leaving both researchers and teachers with a need to deconstruct the meta-theories related to various research paradigms (Firgueroa, 1994; Tracey & Morrow, 2012). Because of the growing interdisciplinary nature that undergirds the study of reading, researchers have called for more comprehensive studies that integrate multiple theoretical stances to better understand how readers transact and construct meaning with texts, particularly picture books (Crawford & Hade, 2000; Serafini, 2010). Special attention has been paid to the area of reading picture books because of their multimodal nature and the demands they place on readers due to the use of two sign systems, written language and images, and their common presence in elementary school classrooms (Serafini, 2010). In particular, researchers (e.g. Maderazo et al., 2010; Martens, Martens, Croce, & Maderazo, 2010) acknowledge the complementary nature of socio-psycholinguistic theory with semiotic theory to highlight how readers not only read words but also images in the construction of meaning. Socio-psycholinguistic perspectives originate from a constructivist view of reading in which readers’ miscues are win- dows into the linguistic cues and cognitive strategies that they employ to construct meaning from written text (Goodman, 1996). The study of reading from this perspective illuminates the complex ways in which readers problem solve as they sample written text, predict upcoming text, and either confirm or disconfirm their predictions in the process of develop- ing comprehension. While socio-psycholinguistic perspectives to reading underscore the importance of readers reading * Tel.: +1 718 997 5307. E-mail address: Bobbie.Kabuto@qc.cuny.edu 0898-5898/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2013.11.002