This article draws on Philip Barnard's model of the interactions between theory and practice, between basic and applied research, to investigate the paradox of reading as an experience both private and public. It uses internal reader experience as a starting point for exploration, evoking the concept of a readerly sense of presence as a selection criterion. Investigating chapters in two novels for young readers, Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman and The Moffats by Eleanor Estes, and drawing on cognitive models of reading, it analyzes the textual constructs that set up a potential for the kind of enactive resonance that enables (though does not mandate) a sense of presence. It investigates the methodological implications of an enhanced sense of reading as a non-reproducible experience and considers the policy and pedagogical implications of not restricting public concepts of reading to what can be readily measured or repeated.