Our first lesson asked us to write a short introduction and list our top ten youth literature reads. As my favorite titles change frequently, I struggled with this somewhat.

There are so many stories that helped shape my youth and that continue to comfort me. However, this does not mean that I have any desire to read them all again. Some of the books I enjoyed did not age well, and I would rather depend on my memories to bring me joy, which would surely be missing if I tried to read any of them as an adult. Looking at you, R.L. Stine. I’m sorry, but I will be the oddball here by stating that R.L. Stine is an amazing writer for kids and for them alone. It is extremely difficult to take a lot of his stories seriously as an adult because I lost that spark that lets me overlook the fact that hundreds of teens have died in this small town, and yet no one has bothered to investigate it. One of the series covers a group of cheerleaders, and are there no parents here?

My Top Ten (at the time of writing my assignment and in no way reflecting on my current top 10)

Fun fact: After making this list, I promptly forgot everything I had placed on it. I had to keep returning to reference it when commenting on others’ posts because I wasn’t sure if we had included the same books.