The data gathered for this study does not support the hypothesis that second grade students, when they write, do not borrow characters, settings, elements of a story, authors' styles and information from nonfictional literature. Students writings were studied to determine the extent of the borrowing, and to answer the questions: (1) Did the students borrow the names of characters from literature to use for their own stories? (2) Did the students use the setting of a known story and change it into their own work? (3) Did the students use elements from a story, such as retelling and actual story into their own words? (4) Did the students use a particular style known to an author to enhance their own story? and (5) Did the students use information from a nonfiction book for use in their own story? The hypothesis was rejected after the data was analyzed. The students did, in fact, borrow ideas from the literature that they read as they wrote their own stories during Writer's Workshop. An appendix contains a tally sheet. Contains 25 references and 2 tables of data. (Author/RS)