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Sunday, April 7, 2013

Falling Back Into YA


In the past few years I have been trying to read as many picture books and middle grade books as possible for my day job, library media specialist at an elementary school. Here is the problem with that: I love young adult lit. I mean really love YA. So I was fitting a few in here and there, but my reading life was definitely dominated by elementary level lit.

That was about to change. I started reading a few more YA books since I challenged myself to read all of the Nerdy Shortlist books from 2012. As I was enjoying those, I decided to go ahead and do the Printz Challenge to read all of the winners and honor books. I'm lovin' it!! And I have even more incentive to read YA for the Rich in Color blog I am part of now. It is so cool to have given myself "permission" to read what I enjoy most. I'm still reading elementary level books, but the amounts have flipped. I fully expect that after this bit of a binge, things will settle back to a more even split, but like Donalyn Miller in her Nerdybookclub post today, I don't want reading to just be an obligation. It is one of my avenues of recreation and stress relief. Donalyn reminded us of the Rights of a Reader.

I am holding on to #5 The Right to Read Anything.

2 comments:

  1. I teach Children's Lit and Adolescent Lit at the college level and find that how much children's vs YA lit I read really varies from semester to semester. YA lit is also my main love, though I have a much greater appreciation for and enjoyment of children's lit now that I follow more of a "read anything" policy rather than trying to force myself to read the books I think I ought to have read. I've been trying to do a Newbery Challenge and let me say, that could really destroy a person's love of reading! (I'm trying out some of the winners from the 1920s right now. Ugh!)

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  2. I completely agree about those early Newberys. Seriously ugh!

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