The purpose of this paper is to make educators, authors, and publishers aware that they must be concerned with rhetorical form as well as content if they wish to present students with accessible, useful textbooks. Using a case study of textbook perception and use in a school district's sixth grade social studies classrooms, the paper illustrates the relationships between rhetorical form, textbook use, and selection. Rhetorical form is discussed on four levels: the knowledge level; the metadiscourse level; the text level; and the disciplinary level. A criterion checklist is provided to help teachers systematize their subjective judgments about the quality of textbooks, and a range of variables to which educators, authors, and publishers need to be sensitive. Finally, the paper suggests practical activities and concrete procedures which teachers can use to influence the selection process. Five tables of data are included, and 38 references are attached. (MS)