Compelling aspects I have noticed throughout my teaching life are the multitude of understandings boys have concerning themselves as readers. In this inquiry, as part of a larger year-long ethnographic study, I observed and analyzed how what counts as talk around text accomplishes curriculum mandates and achieves valuable social ends for one third grade boy. This boy is viewed through a literacy lens from which his conversations and interactions illustrate (1) the richness and diversity of his reading life, (2) the social processes intrinsic in learning to compose meaning in school, and (3) the ways in which school-based literacies maintain, sustain and/or constrain his growth as a reader. (Contains 1 note.)