Becoming a Reader

This is a study of the psychological development of readers of fictional stories across the whole lifespan. The author argues that regardless of personality and background, readers go through a regular sequence of stages as they mature from childhood to adulthood, which affects how they experience and respond to stories. Each subsequent stage requires an advance to a way of thinking about a story which is qualitatively different from the previous one. Appleyard's evidence for these claims is drawn from numerous studies of reading and from interviews with readers of all ages. The developmental perspective provides a useful framework for assessing the implications of competing theories of reading, for charting the evolution of young readers as they mature, and for locating and understanding the varied responses of adult readers. Literary theorists, teachers of reading and literature at every level, developmental psychologists, and general readers interested in the power of reading should find this a useful book.