This report explores how sociocultural factors affect reading engagement, literacy learning, and achievement among a diverse group of learners. The report examines previous theory and research on motivation in the area of reading (reading engagement) from a sociocultural perspective. It describes a study that examined the issue of reading engagement with 18 third-grade Spanish-speaking children and families in an impoverished southern California inner city school--specifically, the relationship between sociocultural factors (organizational features of families' daily living routines) and student reading engagement. It states that the overall purpose of the study was to examine the issue of literacy engagement in "at-risk" children. Case studies also were used to illustrate how reading motivation is embedded in daily practices and how accounts of reading motivation that are focused strictly on the individual in isolation may miss the complexity of factors that are integral aspects of students' reading and later literacy development. Includes 3 figures, 4 tables, and 2 notes. (Contains 71 references.) (NKA)