This thesis focused at analyzing the process of choosing the history books, and the use made of them up from the teachers speech of some municipal schools of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Using the methodology of interviews and drawing on the literature on teacher knowledge, cultural capital and ways of reading, there were fourteen teachers interviewed from different regions of the city. In addition, a survey was made about the the books chosen by all history teachers in the municipal schools and the result is surprising: despite all the PNLD books being used, the vast majority of teachers chose only one, which is not very highly rated by the program, which demonstrates a disagreement between the evaluators expectations of MEC and the teachers. Trying to understand why this happened, we assume that each reader appropriates the text differently. Therefore, we seek to understand how the selection process of textbooks at each school, what are the criteria of the teachers in their choices, which is the place occupied by the book in class, what problems the teacher faces in using the book and what strategies the teacher builds on the use of this material. The results show that teachers consider PNLD a very important public policy, however, find much difficulty in the use of the books for considering their vocabulary far from the cultural background of their students. Moreover, there isn’t a favorable environment to choose the book in schools, it is always a very busy process, besides the PNLD guide hardly being a tool for their choices.