Children’s Language (Vol. 10): Developing Narrative and Discourse Competence. (2001). Edited by Keith E. Nelson, Ayhan Aksu-Koc, & Carolyn E. Johnson. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 10 Industrial Ave., Mahwah, NJ 07430. 192 pages, $45 ($22.50, if using a check or credit card). Reviewed by Cecile Cyrul Spector, Spring Valley, NY.

The focus of this volume is on 1–10-year-old children’s discourse development, with an emphasis on narrative. The chapters are based on seven of the 276 presentations at the Seventh International Congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language. Each chapter addresses issues concerning the interrelations between social, cognitive, and affective capacities and processes in discourse. The studies discussed in these chapters were conducted in various countries and range over seven languages. They cover the following topics: "Setting the Narrative Scene: How Children Begin to Tell a Story" (Israel); "Representation of Movement in European Portuguese: A Study of Children's Narratives" (Portugal); "Why Young American English-Speaking Children Confuse Anger and Sadness: A Study of Grammar in Practice" (United States); "A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Australian and Israeli Parents' Narrative Interactions With Their Children" (Australia and Israel); "The Acquisition of Polite Language by Japanese Children" (Japan); "Interactional Processes in the Origins of the Explaining Capacity" (France); and "Children's Attributions of Pragmatic Intentions and Early Literacy" (Canada).

Nelson et al state that "each [chapter] raises theoretically challenging questions regarding how and when new representations are constructed to support new complexities in narrative and discourse more generally." They also state that methodological issues, such as task conditions, levels of assessment, and cultural differences, are brought under consideration.

The writing styles of the authors of the seven chapters are varied. For the most part, the presentation of the results of their research is well-written. All of the authors provide numerous relevant citations to support their introductory comments and their discussion of results. The reporting of the methodology used in these studies, however, is not consistent throughout the volume. The description of subjects, for example, ranged from complete to perfunctory (in one study, the only reference to the subjects was their age). In addition, some studies provided appropriate statistical data, while others did not.

An interesting theme that runs through several of the chapters is the relationship of narrative ability to the input children get in different cultures. For example, one study describes the differences in parents' storytelling practices from culture to culture, and how these differences are reflected in the development of their children’s narrative interactions as well as their literacy skills.

Professionals in the fields of general linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and intercultural communication who have an interest in children's language acquisition will find the results of this current body of research on discourse development to be thought-provoking.