This article describes a 7th grade Language Arts teacher's investigation into whether she could use her district-prescribed literature selections to effectively increase her students' awareness of sociocultural issues. She used an instructional strategy called Think-Aloud to explicitly discuss social and cultural issues as they related to the characters in the literature. Data indicate that through the Think-Aloud discussions, occurring each week with each literature selection, her students gained a deeper understanding of the literature and of socio-cultural issues such as discrimination and prejudice. (Contains 2 figures and 1 footnote.)