This study employed case study methodology and design research to examine what aesthetic transactions (readers’ thoughts, feelings, associations, etc. that arise during a text encounter) students constructed in response to texts in a Gothic studies reading unit created by the author. The study was conducted in a seventh‐grade reading classroom. Thematic analysis was used to analyze participant data. The findings revealed that participants constructed myriad aesthetic transactions of meaningful connection and imaginative contrast with the Gothic unit texts. Participants enhanced these transactions and formed new ones as a result of pedagogical practices that also nurtured their construction of aesthetic transactions. As a result of these dynamics, participants gleaned academic, personal, and global understandings. The findings suggest that prioritizing students’ construction of aesthetic transactions is critical in order for academic reading to be a meaningful experience that educates the whole person.