To investigate young children's understanding of metaphorical language, 90 chidren from preschool to third grade were read stories ending with metaphorical sentences of varying degrees of difficulty--sentences representing more or less predictable story outcomes and differing in the complexity and explicitness of their figures of speech. After listening to a story, children were asked to act out the meaning of the final, metaphorical sentence. Their enactments were then categorized as either (1) unrelated to the action implied in the metaphor, (2) literal, (3) correct, or (4) composite--an interpretation falling between the correct and the literal meanings. Findings suggested that metaphor comprehension was a developmental skill influenced by the predictability, literalness, and explicitness of the figures of speech used. (MM)