Progressive – stories which seem to want to alter the way things are, or to shift power to sources that don’t have power – stories which try to shake up existing conditions – stories which break conventions typical of storytelling, and in doing so make you think about the ways in which all stories effect us:

intertextuality -an awareness of other stories in the world and reference to them (Alice talking about stories from school)

breaking the 4^th wall - any time a story breaks the illusion of storytelling by talking to the audience, by having characters leave the stage, by acknowledging that there is a script or an author, by allowing a child to speak into the story, by telling stories in multiple levels

self-referentiality - any time a story refers to itself as a story and talks about itself; one example of breaking the fourth wall; it is like meta-textuality, but on a smaller level

meta-textuality – any time a story begins to get philosophical about what it is doing and says something that, if you thought about it, would give you insight into how to read the book itself – (the Chesire cat gives lots of good meta-textual analysis of the whole book)
 
 

Stories which promote: 1) questioning authority; 2) many voices without a single center talking at once, a disorganized chaos of voices 3) playful ways of breaking down storytelling – intertextuality, meta-textuality, breaking the 4^th wall, self-referentiality; 4) the carnivalesque – gross bodily functions, exaggerated bodies, laughter, eating, orifices, interest in the earth, role-playing, the supernatural; 5) people not typically in power: children, minorities, the poor; 6) ambiguous endings that ask the reader to make decisions on their own.