To determine attitudes of 720 middle class sixth grade students toward literary characters who speak regional dialects of American English, two randomly divided groups (experimental and control) read excerpts from "The Yearling,""Hie to the Hunters," and "The Blind Colt." The experimental group read the passages as they were originally written, while the control group read adaptations in "school reader English." Students then responded to multiple choice questionnaires which tested attitudes and comprehension. Correlations were obtained among the scores while the frequency of response to specific questions was found for each treatment group. Some findings and conclusions were that (1) students reading the same passages rewritten in standard English responded more positively to questions concerning the three main characters than did students reading original versions; (2) the character with the heaviest dialect received the lowest rating by the experimental group; (3) the total mean score of all girls was significantly higher than that of all boys; and (4) the control group had a significantly higher mean comprehension score than did the experimental group. (Author/JMC)