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III. Finish at the Front.
The final stage of building a story schema is reviewing 
all the front matter—the pages that precede the first text page. Locate the title page 
that shows the title, author, and publisher. The back of this page lists publication 
information, including the copyright date. (In a few pcture books, the copyright page 
is at the end.) There may be more than one edition of the book, so look for the year 
of original publication. This gives you an idea of when the author wrote the story. 
It is sometimes important to know the decade in which a book was written—par-
ticularly in the case of contemporary fiction, which may not seem contemporary to 
readers who are younger than the book. Look for a dedication or acknowledgment 
that might contain clues about the author. Some authors include a foreword that 
provides information to help readers understand and enjoy the book. Reading titles 
of chapters may provide an overview. 
The information you gain by previewing the end pages, the back and front cov-
ers, and the front matter should give you enough background to allow full enjoyment 
of the book. After reading the first few pages, stop and confirm or disprove your 
earlier predictions.
Modeling the Process 
Modeling the Process 
The following is an example of a think-aloud activity in which you can teach the 
process of previewing a book for comprehension. Using the paperback edition of 
The Voyage of the Frog (Paulsen), I describe here my thoughts as I preview the book. 
The name of this book is The Voyage of the Frog . It sounds like an animal fantasy 
story where a frog takes a trip. Following the last page of text is a map. This is 
probably where the story takes place. The map shows the Pacific Ocean off the 
coast of Lower California and Mexico, and it outlines the route of the voyage. 
That’s a long way for a frog to swim! There’s a lot of detail and notes on the map, 
but I’ll skip it now and look back at it while I read the book to follow where all 
the events happen. 
On the inside of the back cover is a photograph, probably of the author. He 
looks a little like my father with his beard and jacket and baseball cap (except he is 
holding a dog, and my father doesn’t like dogs). The author must really like dogs to 
have one in his picture. Underneath the photograph I see the author’s name—Gary 
Paulsen. The paragraph under the picture says he has won lots of awards. It also 
lists the names of some of his other books. I’ve read Hatchet! It was great. I hope 
this book is just as good. The paragraph says he has homes in New Mexico and on 
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