Thirty-one first grade students from four schools participated in an investigation of the attitudes toward beginning reading held by children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Two of the schools were in inner-city, predominantly low-income, minority areas; one was in a middle-income area with approximately 27% minority enrollment, and one was in an upper-income area with less than 10% minority enrollment. Each child was interviewed individually three times during the school year. The interview questions focused on the child's own ideas and views with regard to learning to read. The results indicated that the students' self-concepts as readers generally paralleled the variations in economic levels of the school communities. In addition, the children's sense of being able to learn to read by themselves was associated with their self-concepts as readers and with the school economic level. It also appeared that the children's views of the difficulty of learning to read and "fun" of it were not necessarily tied to their feeling of success or competence in reading. (FL)