In "Reading "Salt and Pepper"" Anderson examines a story written by three third grade girls and their insights about that story as they re-read it during its production and retrospectively, eight years later. Using a frame for understanding children's writing as social practice, the children's interviews, showing their multiple and sometimes contrastive interpretations, are juxtaposed with the researcher's interpretations. The children's writing is recognized as a manifestation of the social practice of "being friends" as well as reflective of the children's developing social categories of gender, class, and race, grounded in everyday experiences and media influences. Anderson found that the young authors narrated gender, class, and race into being, replete with ideological and hegemonic meanings, through contrastive polar categories associated with their anthropomorphic characters, dialogue, and the plot. This close reading of a child-authored story and interviews about it demonstrates how teachers might apply a social lens to children's writing, investigating the gendered, classed, and raced meanings in children's everyday talk and writing. (Contains 2 figures.)