‘I spy, with my little eye’

This article addresses the question of which imaginative processes are triggered in listeners’ minds when picture books are read aloud. To answer this question, a theoretical framework is first established, clarifying key concepts (imagination, literary learning, image preferences in children, reading aloud). The empirical section then focuses on a study conducted at a primary school. Here read-aloud conversations are analysed to identify traces of imagination building, for example the emotional or associative formation of mental images.