The interaction of children and stories is examined in this book, with particular attention to the way in which children's language usage indicates the development of their concept of story. The first two chapters of the book discuss the topic from a broad perspective, seeking a theoretical framework for organizing children's language usage. Chapters three, four, and five ("A Sense of Story,""Narrative Form," and "Fantasy and Distancing") are concerned with primary school children and the stories that they tell, showing what children at this age consider to be stories, how they organize them, and why they tell them. Chapters six and seven ("The Response of the Child" and "The Response of the Adolescent") shift the emphasis toward children's responses to particular stories and the ways that those responses relate to general stages of mental development. The final chapter returns to the general perspective developed in the early chapters. Three appendixes show how the data were collected and analyzed, what elements of response were developed from the data, and supplementary information that was used for the study. Notes for each chapter, a bibliography, and an index are included. (RL)