The nation's focus on the literacy skills of students--especially boys--has produced many notions of reform. School districts reorganized and changed curricula to meet the needs of struggling readers and writers. In New York City, where this author was teaching, "Balanced Literacy" (a reading and writing workshop) had been implemented in elementary and middle schools, while the "Ramp-Up" program (an adapted reading workshop model) had been chosen to support struggling readers in the junior and senior schools. The author conducted a teacher-research in one of his "Ramp-Up" classrooms at Flushing High School in Queens, New York. His classroom research project focused on boys and reading. He collected completed reading surveys and questionnaires, made observations, and took notes. In addition, he kept a reflective journal to record class behavior and observations, initial conversations, assessments, thoughts, and reflections throughout the study. While the surveys helped him to get to know students' likes and dislikes, he found that the best way to build relationships is through one-on-one reading conferences. Student conferences revealed that many boys would rather fail than read certain texts; thus, it was evident that text selections were critical to students' reading experiences. His surveys revealed that boys like books with action and humor. More importantly, they wanted texts they could relate to, texts in which they could imagine themselves as characters.