Pressured to comply with state and district mandates, teachers may follow scripted, back-to-basics lessons and, as a result, feel frustrated about the assaults on their professionalism and the prevalence of "test-prep pedagogy." As they experience relentless pressure to improve test scores, teachers face a constant challenge to maintain their commitment to student-centered pedagogy. In this paper, the authors' main argument is that, despite the aforementioned challenges, literacy educators should keep independent, self-selected reading at the center of the middle grades language arts curriculum. The authors believe that a literacy-rich classroom environment grounded in student-centered pedagogy offers possibilities for engaging all learners and encouraging them to be lifelong readers. After outlining a rationale for independent reading in a reading workshop classroom environment, they describe how these practices were enacted in an eight-grade classroom in Maine. They share students' reactions to these practices which remind them how influential books can be when students are given opportunity to choose what they read in a classroom environment that values reading. (Contains 2 figures.)