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Take It From an Obsessive Reader: You Should Read More YA
A case for young adult literature & a few suggestions for what to read next
My educational journey is somewhat irregular. Having largely grown up on Army bases, I didn’t set foot in a public school until tenth grade, at which point I had been tested for just about every gifted program under the sun, and the results were the same.
I was an excellent reader.
The private Catholic school I attended told me I read at a college level by fourth grade. The military base school I attended just three years later told me I had the highest reading comprehension in my grade. By quite a wide margin, in fact.
Let’s be clear: I wasn’t the greatest student. I was far more interested in reading what I wanted rather than what was assigned to me. My academic motivation was lacking even as my bookcase became progressively more cramped. I read The Great Gatsby for my English class in the space of a weekend, and then immediately moved on to Anna Karenina, which I would sneak into school and read in the back of class. I powered through Wuthering Heights as fast as I could so I could filch my father’s copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
