I think one of the most difficult things for a young first grader to do is to compare and contrast when they read - books, characters, themes, whatever. So to begin teaching that skill, after we have talked deeply about characters, we have our students begin by comparing a character to themselves. Who do they know better in the world than themselves?!
Although the new Common Core talks about changing directions and having children do less thinking about connections to their own lives and more thinking about the evidence that is actually stated or inferred in the story, very young children still need to think about what they know about stories before they begin and as they read. They do need to access their prior knowledge so that they can take that knowledge and put it with what the text says to form new opinions and interpretations. They still need to think about times when the same thing happened to them so that they can understand the setting, the problem, the solution - so they can understand why a character does what she does. That's not to say that our thinking and conversation don't need to be ratcheted up a level and that we then don't need to look for the direct evidence in the book to back up any claims we make. We can't just talk off the text anymore. The Common Core demands a much higher and deeper comprehension than we have expected from our youngest readers.
At least this is how my own thinking is going right now... as I grapple with these new expectations. Below are some of the Venn diagrams that our students did as they were beginning to understand this very complex skill of comparing and contrasting.
On the first page the student drew a triangle and recorded the characters, setting and the problem in the story.
On the next page he drew a large rectangle and drew the events. Some students wrote three events and others wrote four or six events, depending on the action in the story. 
On the last page the child drew a circle and inside that ending shape, wrote the solution to the problem in the story. In this way students are transferring the organization of the retelling of the Kevin Henkes' stories into their own reading lives.
The triangle represents the beginning of the story and includes the characters, setting, and problem. The three rectangles represent the middle and main events in the story and the circle represents the ending solution. This simple structure often helps students recall the entire story and sequence so that they can retell and write the story that they have heard or read.
No study of Eric Carle would be complete without looking at his art. Throughout this author study students have replicated Carle's art to help understand his stories. Above the Mackarados invited students to color large sheets of paper and then cut the large papers into smaller pieces, much like Carle does. These smaller pieces were then sorted by color to make pictures. One of the things the children noticed was that in most of Carle's books, he has a wonderful yellow sun, so most of them included a yellow sun! They mentored themselves to this outstanding illustrator!
Other art and craft work includes large class murals, click beetles that really click (because they are attached to clothespins!) and lightening bugs that really light up (with the help of small Christmas tree lights!)
While the beginning of the Eric Carle Author Study introduced books by the author and focused on hearing the story language and learning to retell the simple sequences (such as using pictures as retelling parts of The Very Busy Spider in the mobile at left), the later part of the study builds on the retelling by emphasizing other ways of responding to the books during the Readers' Workshop. Responses include oral and written reactions to a book. For instance, they might include a child retelling the story in his own words (or by using a story map); discussing or creating artwork to show comprehension such as illustrating a favorite part of a story; drawing, talking about or writing about connections to a story; or making predictions based on illustrations or portions of the story. 
Some teachers will even introduce Venn diagrams and have the class talk "across" books by showing them how they can compare and contrast books by the same author. While this is not necessarily a Kindergarten standard, many students are ready for this type of comparison to help them organize their thinking.
