This study investigates how first-grade students construct meaning from the picturebook Seven Arches, Seven Colors by Ahmadreza Ahmadi within the framework of Lawrence Sipe’s reader-response theory (2008). Findings indicate that children’s responses to the picturebook can be categorized according to Sipe’s five types of responses: analytic, intertextual, personal, transparent, and performative. However, given that the responses are context- and culture-dependent, some instances within these categories exhibit a more localized and discursive character than those originally described by Sipe. Consequently, the study suggests that Sipe’s framework is enriched in terms of the diversity and manifestation of responses. Analytic responses reveal children’s semiotic understanding of language, character, temporality, spatiality, and imagery, while paratexts play a pivotal role in eliciting intertextuality and resistant readings. Paratexts also illuminate children’s perception of time, which, in this study, is construed not in its chronological sense (chronos) but as culturally, historically, politically, and materially situated. Intertextual responses demonstrate connections between the book and other cultural resources, including media and textbooks. Personal and transparent responses reflect children’s internal, emotional, and intuitive experiences, notably highlighting the emergence of the concept of God; a distinction from the examples presented in Sipe’s original framework. Performative responses, grounded in bodily engagement and play-based activities, foster creative expression. The study further suggests that collective read-aloud sessions with picturebooks can function as a form of political action, providing opportunities for reconsidering concepts such as power and knowledge in the relational dynamics between children and adults.