All Grown Up and 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.

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