Reading for enjoyment in school can be an act of subjective pleasure and thrill for the individual reader or listener, yet it also has an intersubjective dimension which is of educational importance.  When students engage in communication with the surrounding, for instance verbalizing the reading experience in discussions or writings, its meaning is altered in ways which may be of fundamental importance for the development of the self/identity of the student (M. von Wright 2000). Classroom discussions and paper writing are the most common ways of dealing with the reading experiences, but they tend to rely on didactic traditions and habits that seldom challenge the students – or teachers- but rather keep the classroom in a safe order (see e.g.  E. Hultin 2006; G. Molloy 2003).

The paper deals with the educational role of ‘reading for enjoyment’, and it focuses on the possibility for student’s to freely play with their imaginations and to share them through creative action in the classroom. 

The aim of the paper is to outline a basis for a coming study on the subject. True ‘reading for enjoyment’, so we argue, comprises of several dimensions such as the subjective imaginative play with roles and identities and the intersubjective creative action where these may be verbalized and “tried” and their meaning confronted.  This, in turn, raises several questions about school practice: Can students claim space within the narrow genres of the classrooms in secondary school? Is it reasonable to think that this is a wider question of human flourishing, or is it foremost just a practical question of didactic arrangements?