MIDDLE GRADE BOOKS | YOUNG ADULT BOOKS | ADULT READERS
All Grown Up and Still Reading Middle School Books?
Me, Too
Yes, I read fiction and nonfiction for adults all the time — but I’ve been reading middle school and young adult (YA) novels for a while. I started thinking about young readers after going to work at Scholastic Choices Magazine. It was one of the more fun jobs I had — and I loved meeting seventh and eighth graders and finding out what they thought about the world.
Still, as an adult, many people say you’re not supposed to read middle school or young-adult fiction. When I was in my twenties, it was unheard of — and if you did, you wouldn’t tell anyone for fear of them judging you as a reader and a person.
What people may not realize if they don’t read this genre is how spectacular some of the authors are — and how much you miss by not reading them. They also may not know that middle school and YA books can help us understand our kids better — if we have them.
My own situation led me to younger readers’ books after I had to leave Scholastic Magazine to move to the Midwest due to family job changes. Luckily, I was able to write articles for Scholastic as a freelancer. I wrote about budgets, cooking, teen marriage, and much more — along with expanding to another Scholastic magazine focused on current events. I didn’t think about middle school books, though, until my friend Tori became a copy editor in the book division.
Years later, I was laid off from a job and my friend asked if I wanted to consider copy editing. I was intrigued and after taking an online course, was thrilled to be hired. Tori sent me books that were thoughtful and beautifully written, and in next to no time I was hooked. How had middle school fiction grown so much since I was in seventh grade?
My friend started me off with Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve — a fast-moving science fiction story of a young girl growing up as an engineering apprentice after being adopted by her mentor.” Fever’s life turns upside down when she is asked to volunteer for a secret project and winds up in serious danger herself.
I found the writing so precise and luminous, and Reeve’s storytelling was so effortlessly artful, I wanted to read the rest of his trilogy, too. Tori also sent me a few other books to edit, and we started to talk about writing one of our own. That’s when I began looking for middle school books wherever I could find them.
The books I found were much more sophisticated than I anticipated they would be. I had loved The Hobbit, The Mysterious Stranger, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess and Alice in Wonderland when I was growing up. But books like Fever Crumb never entered my orbit until I was an adult, and I think by that time, it was clear that most authors stopped “trying” to write for middle school and young adult readers and just — well. Started writing.
What I found besides talent when exploring middle school authors, was that the best ones had distinct voices, just as adult authors do. You can see this very clearly in a book like A Step From Heaven by An Na, which explores the journey of a young girl who leaves Korea with her family as a child and struggles to adapt to America.
I also fell in love with The Beet Fields by Gary Paulsen (and Paulsen’s writing in general). The Beet Fields seems unequivocally to be written for young adult readers and adults at the same time. It’s depiction of a young man coming of age during his sixteenth summer — and was a knockout and an eye opener for me. Writers like Paulsen didn’t want to talk down to their readers. They wanted to tell the truth.
By sharing their secrets and encouraging readers to do the same, writers like Paulsen chipped away at the stereotypes of middle school and young adult fiction and made it much more complex and layered than it ever had been.
Jack Gantos’s story of being sent to prison was moving and extraordinary. I shared it with the mother of a young man in juvenile detention and he let us both know it changed his life. I was just grateful I’d had the opportunity to read the book myself.
How do middle school and young adult authors feel about their books being in a specialized category and genre? Phillip Pullman said His Dark Materials was meant for everyone who wanted to read the book. I agree wholeheartedly. I’m not a dedicated fantasy or sci-fi or mystery reader, but I know an incredible book when I read one — and The Golden Compass spurred me to keep discovering more of his work.
When I began to write — first, with Tori, and then alone when she decided she didn’t want to continue writing — I was determined to tell the truth. I think as middle school and young adult authors became more honest about the lives tweens and teens are really living, a rebellion formed and calls for bans and book burnings surfaced.
I don’t want to write too much about that here, but I’d like to say that I don’t believe that’s going to work. Honesty can’t be banned — and kids will always be looking for it.
I say this because my favorite middle school book, The Diary of Anne Frank, has survived multiple and numerous attempts to ban it. The diary was written by a fourteen-year-old who was unafraid to tell the truth about herself, her family, the horrific consequences of hatred and the saving grace of love. I believe generations of children who come after Anne will continue to read her work and be inspired.
Ultimately, my own book was written for all readers, with a little more focus on middle school. The narrator is growing up in a Beat Generation family in 1958 in Greenwich Village. My goal was to create a coming-of-age story about the characters’ experience with her parents’ separation, the judgments of a conventional society about its rebels and dream makers, and the healing power of art.
The story turned into a book called The Beat on Ruby’s Street, and was published in 2015 by Booktrope. It then migrated to Dragon Moon Books a year later. I have heard from middle schoolers who relate to Ruby’s struggles, and have also heard from adults who read the book before or after giving it to their kids (thank you!)
Since The Beat on Ruby’s Street was published, Dragon Moon published book two, which is about the American Blacklist in the 1950s and how it affected writers, their friends and their families. The final book is being written as we speak, and is set in North Beach, San Francisco at Christmastime.
What I found, both writing and reading middle school and young adult books, is that tweens and teens and adults are reading for the same reasons. They’re looking for stories that move them emotionally and viscerally. They are trying to figure out what matters most to them, and learning how others’ lives reflect the challenges, tragedies, humor and ambition that visits all of us.
So, if you are reading any of the books I mention here, and you’re older than say, fifteen, I hope you won’t belittle yourself for reading books that are supposed to be tailored to middle school or young adult readers. Because if they resonate with you, chances are they are resonating with many fellow readers who are also “older.”
By investigating works for younger readers, we are widening our horizons. I like to think middle school books expand our vistas, overall — and, who knows? Those larger vistas could be very helpful not only in our own lives, but when talking with kids, yes? Including our own.
