Confession

I have a confession to make.

I am a pedo-book-aphile. That’s right, I like young books.

It’s a sickening thought to a lot of people. I know it’s even slightly monstrous. But I can’t help it—there’s just something about a book geared for young people that I can’t resist. The pure joy, the unadulterated story, the certainty that everything will work out alright in the end—there’s nothing like it. Adult books are fine, too, but they’re always complicated. There’s always the possibility the hero may actually die or, even worse, the heroine will have to live without the hero in the end because, honestly, it’s the way the real world works.

Thankfully young books don’t really care about the way the real world works. Well, they do up to a point: they focus on teaching life lessons, and include hardships in their stories to illustrate these life lessons. But the reader can also be very certain that if the protagonist follows these life lessons, everything will work out okay.

Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Twilight… I have quite the track record for falling in love with young books. Vampire Academy, a series about—what else?—a school for vampires, is a series I discoverd this weekend (not on the same level at all, but still emotionally engaging, though the writing is pretty bad). Unfortunately only three of the five books in the series have been released, and the third book ended on a very dire note. In fact, the depressing end to the story pretty much ruined my day yesterday. But then I remembered the obvious. Sure, things may look bleak now; it may seem that the two protagonists are never going to be able to be together because she has to kill the man she loves. But guess what? This is a young book, so somehow, someway everything will turn out alright in the end. And just thinking about that lightened my mood considerably.

And that’s what I love about them. They’re simple. It’s all about the story and the emotional reaction the story generates. And they hook me like nothing else, a fact which I am reminded of time and time again. I am able to lose my self in their stories, cry with their pain, revel in their love, yet never fear that the author is just stringing me along without a happy ending in mind.

So you can judge me; it’s only to be expected. Sometimes I even judge myself—me, with an English degree from Vanderbilt; me, with a background in publishing; me, who fancies myself something of a writer—stooping so low as to declare myself a pedo-book-aphile?

But if this is wrong, I don’t want to be right.