This paper reports on part of a qualitative study that enlisted a small number of students in fifth and eighth grades (n=19), all with a background of domestic computer ownership and use, for intensive work with texts in different media (i.e., books, videos, and CD-ROMs). The following questions were examined: (1) What are the consequences of multimedia exposure and experience for readers' tacit understandings of how texts work? (2) What repertoires of strategies and behaviors help people to process story and information in different media? (3) How does experience in different media and platforms affect people's strategic approaches to texts in different formats? and (4) What individual quirks or patterns of response, if any, manifest themselves across media boundaries? Results demonstrate that those who have grown up with domestic access to video, computers, and the Internet are often relatively neutral when it comes to platform, preferring to judge texts by issues of personal salience and fluency of access. (MES)