This original study shows how children make meaning in a variety of modes and it challenges conventional notions of literacy as being linked only to print. By observing children making models, drawing, writing and playing, and by tracking children's ideas as they flow through a nursery, new ways of understanding and crediting children's communications are revealed. "Transformations" examines how a variety of activities such as model making, cutting out, drawing and communication in the widest sense, are all forms of literacy. Its linking of theory and practice gives nursery and infant teachers access to new and challenging theories of communication and extends their understandings about the social and cultural differences of young children. The theory that children naturally negotiate multiple sign systems when making meaning is develop, and the book illustrates how children's communication is shaped by the dynamic interplay between their internal worlds and external socio-cultural forces. This book is for early years teachers, nursery nurses and anyone working with young children who welcomes fresh insights into how children produce texts. Based on her observations in an inner city nursery and using data which embraces work by children at home and at school and by bilingual children, Kate Pahl here illuminates how children make sense of the world, and how they present their worlds.