A study was designed to formulate a taxonomy of the literary response processes of children. Three fifth grade girls reading above grade level were asked to read two books that treated a common subject (the death of a child) in different ways. Interviews with the children were recorded so that their literary responses could be analyzed for emergent categories of discussion, total words uttered, turns taken during conversation, interruptions, percentages of conversations within the categories of R. F. Bales's classification for interaction process analysis, and percentages within Alan Purves's categories of literary response. These data indicated that the girls' patterns of response promoted and inhibited their approaches to a text. There was evidence for Louise Rosenblatt's contention that the reader and the text transact to create the work of art. There were as many stories created as there were readers in the study, but those stories were still socially exchangeable. The study also confirmed Arthur Applebee's findings about a child's concept of story by applying his model at the case study level. The general patterns that Applebee found across several responses were observable within the responses of the three readers; and the separation of evaluation and the creation of an evaluative hierarchy seemed both necessary and appropriate. (RL)