A study was conducted to determine whether the interests of seventh grade students were reflected in the content of the basal stories used in the classroom. Subjects were 48 seventh graders enrolled in developmental reading in an upper middle-class socioeconomic region of New Jersey. On a questionnaire, students were asked to select from a list of fiction and nonfiction stories their first, second, and third choices of stories they like to read. The questionnaires were tallied and categories of student reading interests were determined. Stories in the basal readers--the Scott Foresman "Sense" (1981) and the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich "Exploring Paths" (1979)--were individually analyzed and story content was categorized into areas of interest. The number of each type of story was recorded. A comparison and correlation were made between the questionnaires and what was found to be the story content of the basals. Results indicated that the most frequently chosen stories of seventh grade students do not coincide with those that most frequently occurred in the basals used. (A review of related research, a bibliography of references, and a copy of the questionnaire are appended.) (EL)