Animated films are complex, multimodal works which capture children and adults alike. While the main aim of many of the popular films is to tell a fantastical story, they also provide an aesthetic experience and a background for reflection on a wide range of issues relevant to their intended audiences - from the importance of family to themes such as identity development and even death. Animated film is moreover one of the most important contemporary media forms in the lives of children. Since children per definition belong to a different interpretative community than the adult researcher, understanding media aimed at children necessitates bringing children themselves into the research process – gaining a child perspective from children themselves.

Therefore, exploring empirically how children engage with specific animated films, and looking into what elements of the aural and visual aesthetic children pay attention to, as well as the understandings that children make, is therefore highly important in order to understand this media type and the kind of involvement it affords from its target group.

Based on interview and observation data from an ongoing qualitative audience reception study focused on the music in Frozen (Buck, Lee, Vecho, & Beck, 2013), Up (Docter & Peterson, 2009), and Shrek the Third (Miller & Hui, 2007), I will in this presentation discuss how children aged 7-11 react to selected animated films (while watching) and express their understandings in subsequent communication. I will furthermore relate these insights to the aesthetic and communicative structure of the films.