Sarah

Not me

This is not me.  It's not even a relative.  That's R.L. Stine and he kept me company through most of my junior high years.  Well...his books did anyway.  And guess what?  He's still writing!  While Carrie and Chanin read age-appropriate romances, I found myself drawn more to scary stories; R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, and the amazingly horrific Stephen King.  I read other things too, but this constituted the majority of my not-school-mandated literary forays.

During that time I learned that the best stories haunt you even after they're over.  Thanks to The Shining I don't put my back to fire extinguishers and I greatly distrust topiary.  But I also learned that you don't have to be scared by the book to be haunted by it.  My personal definition of courage comes from To Kill a Mockingbird, and I read that as a freshman in high school.  Whenever I find myself moping around about being bored (which is approximately never because my children are continually making a mess for me to clean up), I remember Milo getting stuck in the Doldrums from The Phantom Tollbooth.  And when everything starts to get too adult in my world, I look up and find the hidden things in the clouds overhead thanks to The Little Prince.  I loved the books I read as a "young reader" and "young adult."  To this day, some of them remain my favorites....and that's what I want to share with you.

PS  Like Carrie, I, too, am  Twi-loather.  I read all four of those books waiting for that girl to actually wonder what she knew about herself rather than that boy/vampire/really old guy.  I'm still waiting.  And I'm a little bitter about it.  So don't expect any glowing reviews about the series from me.