The relationship between children's knowledge of particular situations and their comprehension of stories about them was investigated. Children in kindergarten and grades two, four, and six heard stories about differentially familiar situations and then answered questions. "Scripts," characterizing knowledge about stereotypical events, were obtained from each child. Results supported predicted relations between scripts and comprehension. Children who had adequate scripts comprehended explicit and implicit story forms equally well. All children had good comprehension of stories about highly familiar events, but kindergartners performed more poorly on stories concerning less familiar situations. Sixth graders did significantly better than younger children on unfamiliar stories. (Author)