This article considers children's engagement with the "Ologies", a series of postmodern texts that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. It follows on from a text-based analysis of the series published in this journal (22(3) 2015). Data collected from 9-12 year olds demonstrate how actual readers took up the invitation offered by the text and were able to identify the tension between realism and fantasy, oscillate between different genres, stop to play games and use the tactile to make meaning. In addition, they willingly brought their own knowledge of the world to the text and were able to tease out meanings through dialogic interaction. We argue that the meaningful discussion that ensued is due to the multi-layered nature of the books which offers agency to the pupils with little adult interference.