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10 October 2011

What Story Do You Want?

One question that I keep getting a lot is: What book do you wish you had when you were a kid?

I grew up with some great classics: I had ENDER'S GAME and Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet, and CS Lewis, and Patricia Wrede, and so many more.

But there's no denying that there are a few books I wish I had back then.

  • Harry Potter. I was in college when I started reading (the third book had just come out, and so I read all three at once, then started the wait for Book 4). And while it was so much fun reading those book--and I love how I got to anticipate them and go to the midnight buyings, etc.--I do wish that I could have had the magic of those worlds as a kid.
  • ELLA ENCHANTED by Gail Carson Levine. That book is brilliant--but what I love the most is the end, and how Ella has to make a hard decision...and does. That's a book I could have used when I was younger.
  • 13 LITTLE BLUE ENVELOPES by Maureen Johnson. Ginny, the main character, is scared--but she goes out on an adventure anyway. She did the things I wanted to do when I was younger, but was always afraid to do. I wish I could have read about how she did them first.
  • RAMPANT by Diana Peterfreund. Young me would have loved the concept of killer unicorns, but I think a lot of the underlying message of the books would have been just as important to young me, whether I knew it or not.
What about you? What are some books that you wished you had when you were younger?
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5 comments:

  1. Jaime MorrowOctober 10, 2011 at 11:20 AM

    Definitely the Harry Potter books. While I appreciate their magic as an adult, I think it would have blown my mind as a kid.

    Also, The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman. Such a fun little book :)

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  2. EmilyOctober 10, 2011 at 11:49 AM

    I, too, wish I had Harry Potter when I was a kid. My daughter was recently looking for something to read and I tried to get her to read the Wizard of Oz books. She was very hesitant and I tried to sell them to her as the best books I read as a kid. And she said, "Yeah, but you didn't have books like Harry Potter."

    And she's right. But, she did read the books and loved them. And now you can get all fifteen of them on a kindle for like $2.

    And even though I wish I could have read all of these new books coming out as a kid. I'm still grateful I can read them as an adult.

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  3. Mandy P.S.October 10, 2011 at 12:29 PM

    I am so grateful that I had Harry Potter as a kid, and that I was the generation that got to wait in anticipation for each and every book. I was 11 when the third book came out and I started reading them, and I don't think its over exaggerating to say Harry Potter brought together my generation.

    There are a lot of books that existed when I was younger that I wish I had discovered, like the Belgariad. But I really wish dystopian had been this popular when I was a YA. I love dystopian novels and would have loved to have The Hunger Games and others when I was a teen.

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  4. JennaQuentinOctober 11, 2011 at 3:42 AM

    Fairest by Gail Carson Levine on self-image would have been excellent!

    I was in my late teens/early twenties when I read Bloomability by Sharon Creech and Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles - but I'm just glad they are written and found their way into my life, at any age!!

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  5. AnnikaOctober 11, 2011 at 11:20 AM

    DANI NOIR by Nova Ren Suma would have been my favorite book of all time. (It ranks pretty high even as an adult.)

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