Current policy, media and curriculum initiatives across western nations are drawing literacy and literacy pedagogy toward enticingly simplistic understandings of literacy as commodity. Increasingly they focus on "fixing" perceived literacy problems by assuming the primacy of early years literacy and "top-up" intervention programs. In the wash-up of these narrow policies failing in their primary mission, it is important that literacy researchers and educators consider expanding notions of literacy rather than returning to "old" solutions for new issues. This article revisits a prior critique of Reading Recovery as a solution to failure to learn school-based literacy. Using data collected as part of a larger study into constructions of literacy failure, we analyse the shifting "ways to be a reader" required of one student during a Reading Recovery lesson. We argue that the competence required to negotiate various literacy learning contexts across one morning of learning adds to the complexity of school-based literacy learning as much as it might provide support. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)