Penny dreadfuls were cheap adventure novels devoured by the young and deplored by scholarly adults who wanted to see teenagers reading "real literature." Now admit it, folks. How many of us have turned our noses up at Anthony Horowitz or Lisi Harrison and pined for the days when children read Mark Twain and Charlotte Bronte? (When were those days, by the way? Are we sure they happened?) I'm guilty of it, too. Especially as a brand-new teacher six years ago, I was full of concern about how we were going to get the kids reading, but not just reading: reading good books. Chesterton, bless his heart, reminds readers of his essay that "literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."
I love good literature. I love good stories more. When they go together, bliss. When they don't, I'll choose the good story. I wouldn't have said that six years ago, fresh out of college with the brilliant conclusions in my senior thesis on James Joyce still keeping me warm at night, but one of the blessings of my teaching career was that it reintroduced me to YA lit. and managed to loosen me up enough that I can enjoy it again. Heck, maybe Twilight is the Hannah Montana of fiction. So what? It's fun. That's what's so great about reading kids' books. Kids read for fun, and any book that isn't fun doesn't last.
That's why I always took my seventh grade students' suggestions on what to read, and that's why I miss their input now. That's why, even though I've been ravenous for fiction ever since I finished Ann Brashares' new novel last week, and even though the likes of The Faerie Queen and Sons and Lovers and Cousin Bette are sitting on my shelf unopened, I'm not in the middle of a novel right now. But I hope to be by the end of the week. That's when the local children's librarian should be calling me to pick up the new Penderwicks book I put on hold.
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