Armchair BEA 2014 :: Middle Grade/Young Adult

My most recent Scholastic Book Club Order

I have a confession.

I think I became a teacher because I loved book orders so much and if I were a teacher, I could pass them out to my students... and maybe even order a book, or two, or a few dozen at a time for myself. 

When I first started book blogging, I didn't really have a game plan. I didn't really know where it was going to head. I just knew I wanted to talk about books. Over the course of my first year blogging, I realized a fact that I couldn't ignore anymore. I really, really like reading kid lit. 

Maybe it's because it reminds me of the books I would devour as a kid and the piles of books I'd bring home from the local library. It could very well be because I still feel like a kid at heart. 

Plus, when I read middle grade/young adult fiction, it makes me even more powerful as a teacher (aka book pusher extraordinaire) because when a kid comes to me and wants to read a book about dragons, zombies, animals, girls liking boys, etc., I have a growing list in my head (and shrinking bookshelf space in my classroom) of books that I can share with them to fuel their love of reading.

I also owe a lot to MG/YA fiction. Harry Potter, in particular. Even though I was a voracious reader as a kid, once adolescence hit me, leisure reading went completely out the door. Sometimes I wish I was a young adult during this current/present time because there are now a whole section of bookstores and libraries devoted completely to books for teens. When I was a teen, I read Flowers in the Attic and then the other choices I had that weren't too "childish" were Tom Sawyer and all the classics, which weren't exactly easy to read on your own (at least they weren't for me at that age). This lack of reading continued as I went to college... until, I read Harry Potter. 

Reading Harry Potter felt like I was transformed back into my 5th grade classroom as a 10-year old, reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first time.

It was magical. #punny ;)

No, really. It was truly magical. For the first time in years, I wanted to read again. I craved the feeling of escaping into other worlds. I read books for fun again. I didn't just read to highlight information to remember for a midterm or to cite and use in a final paper. I actually read, just to read. And it.felt.good.

So, even though I'm a much older Potter-head than most people, I find it interesting and somewhat poetic that it was MG/YA that got me back into reading again. 

Nowadays, I'm proud to be a MG/YA reader. Since we're confessing things, here's another one for you... I read more MG than adult fiction actually. Having two young kids means that free time to read is pretty much nonexistent, so reading MG/YA is usually easier for me because they tend to be shorter and easier to digest in a smaller amount of time. 

So, I guess what I'm really saying is... I really, really love middle-grade/young adult fiction. 

Plus, I still get super excited whenever the Book Box arrives in my classroom.