Tape-recordings of five first-grade boys retelling three picture-story books were analyzed to determine the effects of illustration and text in cueing children's oral responses to literature and to explore research methodologies in the area of children's literature. "Where the Wild Things Are,""Whistle for Willie," and "Randy's Dandy Lions" were used as representative of fantasy, realism, and humor in prose, poetic-prose, and verse. Author's styles were compared with the responses they generated in the children as measured by minimal terminable units (T-units). In 90% of the 772 T-Units examined, over 50% of the responses were generated by both text and illustration, 25% by text alone, and 11% by illustration alone, thus indicating that text was more influential in generating the children's responses than illustrations. The greatest response was to the book in verse, revealed by an increase from one to two words per T-Unit. Virtually no figurative language was generated by the children from their exposure to the books. Information was also acquired on fluency of response, function of response, and incidence of connective language and mazes. (Author/MF)