Much has been written about the crucial nature of early literacy experiences in learning to read. Many types of story reading interactions could have an effect on the development of reading literacy. A study explored the kind of social interactions that foster children's individual development toward independent functioning, especially addressing the consequence of the teacher's story reading style on the memory and comprehension of young children, and what conversational attributes can be determined to affect children's memory and comprehension for stories. Participants were 24 Chicago public school children with a mean chronological age of 5.8; 38% were low income, while 17% were bilingual. Using three books by Mem Fox, three conditions (a control condition, a questioning condition, and a co-construction condition) closely mirroring the story reading styles to young children were tested. The study's data did show beneficial effects for intense one-on-one interaction between an adult and child over a story book reading. The interactions did facilitate the below average ability student's memory and comprehension for stories; these students, however, still recalled less and required more support in the form of prompting than did the average and above average ability students. Additionally, in answering the comprehension questions, the below average students generated fewer inferences and made more incorrect responses than did the average and below average students. (Contains 4 tables of data and 16 references.) (NKA)