This classroom research project focused on 10 fifth-grade students, all of whom had been labelled low-average achievers by their school. Students were encouraged to read, write, draw, talk, tell stories, and play freely. Five case studies emerged from the interactions. It became apparent that the children were shaping literature to their experience of the world just as their experience of the world in turn was giving a definite and powerful shape to the literature. To be contrasted with the traditional belief in the need to move underachievers into the mainstream are two alternatives: (1) transforming the vision of such children as part of the mainstream; and (2) transforming attitudes about story-making to view it as another form of literacy no less important than reading or writing. Educators must move from the notion of teaching children to become more like the teacher to teaching children to grow more as themselves. (SG)