The author analyzes the way the girls discuss pleasure in becoming "the eye" of the reader, use film to decode the genres of literature, master forms such as fantasy and Gothic, describe the differences between reading and viewing films, and identify only with animal rather than human characters. Blackford intertwines the vivid voices of her girl respondents with her own story of moving beyond her feminist and multicultural assumptions of how children are shaped by the stories we tell in literature. This breakthrough text presents surprising findings about how girls appreciate literature and what they enjoy about reading.