I don’t watch a lot of television. I wish I could say it was for a good reason, like that I think it’s bad for my brain, or that I don’t have a television at home, but the real reason is that I’m very jealous of my time, and watching it tick by in 42-minute intervals gives me anxiety. I’m much better at getting lost in a task… or in a book. And for those times when I want the brain candy of a good sitcom without the anxiety, I reach for YA (or MG).
Let me be abundantly clear. I love YA completely unironically. I bring literal stacks of YA with me on my annual beach vacations (we’re talking my library’s full 20-book limit).
Hell, I write YA.
I get upset when I hear people get up in arms about children’s literature being less serious than literary works (as I did on the most recent occasion I decided to do away with my no-TV rule and watched the opening episode of Friends from College, where the main character spent about 8 of the 22 minutes of the pilot episode railing on YA). But YA, for as exciting and challenging and enticing as it is for me to write, is also a balm for my brain, a way of tuning into a story that just escorts me through itself rather than forcing me to work my way through, as so many other books I enjoy tend to do. Reading YA isn’t a workout – it’s a treat.
It is with this in mind that I reached for the first of the Percy Jackson series which, I’ll admit, I discovered in my Instagram explore function.
(Thank you, Instagram explore function.)
This series, which follows a middle-school-aged demigod and his similarly-immortal-adjacent friends, encompass a lot of what I think is so great about children’s literature today. Relatable protagonists that aren’t perfect. Tone-appropriate explorations of learning disabilities and other real-world challenges, hurdles, and struggles. Kids facing tough decisions and making the difficult calls.
Books that trust kids to be smart: as scholars, as people, as readers.
I raced through the first of these books, and I’ve already got the second waiting for me. As tempting as it is to jump right in, I’m saving it for the next time I feel like I need, not a book that will challenge me with crafted prose or heavy symbolism, but a book that will make me feel good about the state of publishing and children’s literature today.