Literacy as material engagement: the abstract,tangible and mundane ingredients of childhood reading

This article explores questions that arise when we consider the things that make literacy possible. How do they interact with ordinary household objects and activities, and what intertextual implications arise from such mundane interactions? The concept of dual representation suggests that some objects may have both a physical and a symbolic existence; a book is a thing that sits on a shelf but it is also a representation of an imaginary content. It is commonplace to think of electronic texts as having only a virtual life, but they also reside within an object that has a tangible household existence. Objects are very often managed by hands, and this article explores the role of the hands in directing attention and in connecting the objects of literacy to their surrounding environment. It draws on an extended study of one child's access to analogue literacy material. Comparing that access to the repertoire of contemporary children, it suggests that we may better understand the role of literacy in our lives if we attend to the tangible as well as the abstract associations the objects of literacy evoke and if we think of literacy as a form of material as well as intellectual engagement.