For almost three decades of teaching English and writing, the author has learned that despite years of reading and writing instruction and experiences in school, many, if not most, students have misguided, incomplete, or jumbled perceptions of genre, medium, and text. Two dynamics--traditional transmissional approaches to text as well as composition and the high-stakes accountability era driven by standards and testing--have created students with these misconceptions, and as a result, students who are not challenged to examine and develop their critical literacy as readers and writers, thus not challenged to read and reread the world, write and rewrite the world. In this article, the author aims to expand the focus on text and critical literacy, offering "English Journal" readers "Adventures with Text and Beyond" by exploring multigenre units and unit-driven adaptations to challenge students as emerging readers and writers against the highly scripted reality of 21st-century education in the United States.