Kindergarten-aged children's use of parallel constructions in their peer storytelling, while not common, reflect children's interest in the organizational principle of theme and variation. Semantic and syntactic parallelism represent two of many ways in which some youngsters employ theme and variation in their storytelling. The constructions give a sense of cohesiveness to narrative efforts and provide a mechanism for organizing descriptions of the fictive world. Semantic parallelism, the more common form, emphasizes cataloging skills. In these constructions the children hold constant the stated and then implied syntactic frame as well as the central idea of the meaning set, and variation develops as they consider the range of phenomena that can be appropriately described within that central idea. This cataloging gives narrators a resource for fleshing out their stories, augmenting the storyteller role. Audience members can capitalize on the central idea of a meaning set in attempting to co-narrate and to comment. In responding to audience contributions, narrators deal with the issues of speaking rights and the boundaries of the narrative itself. (Author/MSE)