The Ethiopian government has called for educational improvement, emphasizing the employment of active, student-centered pedagogy. One way of maximizing an interactive learning approach involves blending a cross-age reading buddies program with high-quality, culturally relevant children's literature. Employing descriptive, mixed-method research, this study explored the effectiveness of books and buddies on English language use, motivation, and active learning in an underresourced, "budget" school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The report includes a comparison of traditional workbook exercises to the reading of real books. It gives criteria for choosing literature for children of poverty in a developing country, and it describes a process for preparing older students to share second-language books with younger schoolmates. The results of the study suggest that a limited number of well-chosen books used in the context of cross-age reading buddies can have a positive impact on the frequency of English language usage, as well as on students' motivation to learn English. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)