Children investing in literacy

•In their investments in literacy, children draw on figured worlds as interactional resources in creation of social identity.•For the three children portrayed in the article, investing in literacy is not a rationally calculated and targeted process.•For them investing in literacy is a complex process based on ‘as if realms’ that adds meaning to various literacy practices.•In the interviews, the focal children talk about investment in literacy as mutually linked to winning an identity in school.•In this setting, a perception of ‘can/cannot’ read and write dominates when the children represent themselves. How children participate in literacy practices at school and how they acquire reading and writing skills is closely entwined with their perception of reading and writing, and with the interactional processes and social relations in which they partake, as well as with the discourses on literacy that surround them. For children, these literacy activities also constitute a space in which they construct and understand literacy, as well as serve as a space for negotiating how they view themselves as readers and writers, and as students. Drawing on data from the research project Tegn på Sprog, in the following referred to as Signs of Language, in this article we will explore how a group of children negotiate representations of themselves as readers and writers during their first months at school, and how in their investments in literacy they draw on different figured worlds as interactional resources when constructing their identity and generating meaning in their social worlds. These processes lead to the children both positioning themselves and being positioned differently in relation to one another and in relation to various discourses on reading and writing.