When the teaching of strategies for understanding literature crowds out a close reading of literary works themselves, something is amiss in language arts instruction, and students lose out. This has become the case in too many elementary and even secondary classrooms today, Senechal believes. Using a strategy-based lesson proposed by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, Senechal illustrates how formulaic strategies can lead to lessons that sloppily interpret books and overwhelm the joy of reading with elaborate jargon. Equally egregious, the approach leads to students selecting most of their own in-school reading rather than studying a curriculum of deliberately selected, high-quality books that will enrich their lives. With Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "To Any Reader" as an example, Senechal shows how a lesson might focus closely on a work of literature itself, and how this close study might bring surprises. She gives suggestions for working literature-focused instruction into language arts programs.