{"id":6,"date":"2011-04-27T07:22:03","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T02:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/?p=6"},"modified":"2011-04-27T07:22:03","modified_gmt":"2011-04-27T02:22:03","slug":"why-ya-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/?p=6","title":{"rendered":"Why YA for me"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was 12 I did not like to read. But one day I was bored and I went into my older sister’s room to<\/p>\n

snoop around. She had one shelf of books and I remember sitting on her floor looking at them. I pulled out a tattered copy of Judy Blume’s It’s Not the <\/em>End of the World, <\/em>read the back cover and decided to give it a try. I went back into my room and I don’t know if I read it in one sitting, but I know I read it pretty quickly and the whole thing. I had never read a book that sounded like a friend of mine. I was hooked. I soon devoured all of Judy Blume’s YA titles, discovered S.E. Hinton (The Outsiders<\/em> is still my favorite book of all time) and moved onto Norma Klein and Paula Danziger.<\/p>\n

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This is what the copy I read in 1986 looked like<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

That was obviously a long time ago, but I found as I graduated from high school and moved onto college and adulthood, I still was drawn to the same kind of books. In the 90s, YA wasn’t really a “thing” in the way it is now, and a lot of novels were categorized general fiction that would be seen as crossovers today. In fact, my favorite novel of the 90s, Blake Nelson’s Girl<\/em> was first serialized in “Sassy Magazine” published and sold in the adult section of the book store and then reprinted ten years later as a YA novel. In the 90s I started reading novels about 20 somethings (which I was one) and Gen X, but I also spend a couple of years working in the Children’s Dept of a large bookstore (hint, not the one which just filed for bankruptcy), so I read all the YA books I could during my downtime. A that point, I tried to hide my addiction, embarrassed that I was reading novels meant for teenagers when I most definitely wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Then I made a fantastic discovery. There was a whole world of academia surrounding Children’s Literature. I did some research and discovered Simmons College in Boston offered an MFA in Writing for Children.\u00a0 I applied, was accepted and my life became all about YA. I recall sitting around the table at orientation making the introductions. The others were talking about the books I loved. The books that I hid in the back of my bookshelf behind Jane Austen because I wanted to look smarter than I am. I found my people and it felt like home.<\/p>\n

So to tell you some things about me – I guess the biggest thing is that I’m a mom of two young boys (one is hanging on my arm as I type this). L & R are 4 & 2 respectively, so I’m in the thick of it\u00a0 so to speak. I finished my MFA last May and now I’m working on one of the novels I wrote for my final project. I will finish it and submit it. Someday.While there, I was able to read and discuss my beloved YA novels with others who were passionate about them too. I discovered a whole slew of authors that I missed along the way, like John Green and Marcus Zusak. (I may or may not have driven over two hours to meet John Green and David Levithan. I admit nothing.)<\/p>\n

I also like teen TV like Degrassi<\/em> and Glee, <\/em>and I may have recently bought seasons 1-4 of Boy Meets World. <\/em> Basically I’m obsessed with high school and the people in it. I love character driven stories, strong voices and flawed characters. I’m also a sucker for romance. But mostly, I just like when a character feels real to me, like they could exist in the world that they are in.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was 12 I did not like to read. But one day I was bored and I went into my older sister’s room to snoop around. She had one shelf of books and I remember sitting on her floor looking at them. I pulled out a tattered copy of Judy Blume’s It’s Not the… Continue reading Why YA for me<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,13,14,10,7,8],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-john-green","tag-judy-blume","tag-norma-klein","tag-reading","tag-ya-lit","tag-young-adult-lit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/whyablog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}