Why read? We take a turn in the conversation initiated by Jean Stockard's article, "Increasing Reading Skills in Rural Areas: An Analysis of Three School Districts" (2011a), with a dialog in which we engage the epistemological positions at play within this debate. We understand the different positions as representations of each author's ideas about what reading is and what reading is for. These ideas evoke productive questions of power and ideology which we argue should be positioned squarely at the center of this debate.