This qualitative work analyzes what parents, teachers, and children say about reading when Accelerated Reader and Reading Renaissance are used for reading instruction. Critical discourse analysis offered a glimpse at beliefs about reading and how power relations were embedded in what teachers, parents, and children said about AR and reading.…

A fourth grader's reading and retelling is studied to demonstrate how he learns about the complexity of the text while he reads. The importance of understanding what a reader learns through transaction with a well-written complex text is also discussed.