In this article, the author describes how she and her eighth-grade class moved away from formalism into a more personal, more connected, more authentic response to literature. She also explains the importance of a transactional approach in teaching literature and creating a democratic classroom. She honors Louise Rosenblatt, who introduced transactional theory in her book "Literature as Exploration." What Rosenblatt means--what transactional theory demands--is that teachers and their students do far more with what is read in a classroom than look for patterns and devices or even comprehension or answers to multiple choice test items on the state exam. Rosenblatt insists that literature is engagement, response, search for insight, and, ultimately, that that study can be both individual and idiosyncratic as it is heavily and necessarily dependent upon what every reader brings to the text. If Rosenblatt the radical is correct, classrooms can foster readers who understand what they read, are immeasurably changed by what they read, and, finally, will continue to read long after they have forgotten their teachers' names.