5 Reasons to Sneak Into Your Library's Children's Section

Adult readers are finally coming to terms with the fact that YA fiction is where it's at. What can we say? We're funnier, better paced, and are happy to serve as a melting pot for all those other demographics who've been disappointed by themselves, ages 12 to 74. But how much do we think about dipping back into the middle school or children's genre? Here are five reads you might have missed your first go-round at being 10, but aren't too old enjoy as a more sophisticated reader.


Granny Torrelli Makes Soup 
Sharon Creech

I could tell you how many times I've read this book, but if I kept track of how many times I read a good book, I wouldn't have time to read any good books. And if I did know, telling you would probably be embarrassing.

Sharon Creech is famous for her novel Walk Two Moons, which won so many awards the cover art is no longer visible under all the medals plastered to the front of the book.

But out of everything I've read by Sharon Creech, this is the book that sticks out in my head: a story of a twelve-year old girl, the blind boy next door, the new girl across the street- told only through stories she tells to her grandmother as they make soup in her kitchen. Sharon Creech has brings an original voice in every book she writes, so of course this one isn't an exception. She's awesome like that. This book has a simple, raw, and magical tone that I really wish I could bottle and use on my poetry assignments.

Ella Enchanted
Gail Carson Levine

I'll never exactly consider Ella Enchanted a children's book. When I heard Gail Carson Levine last summer at a signing, she said she couldn't understand why her publishers keep putting these nine year old girls on the covers of her novels.

Ella Enchanted is a re-telling of Cinderella. I imagine Gail Carson Levine's friends as a kid all twirling their princess skirts and going on vacations to Disney World for autographs while she rolled her eyes in a very future-author-y way and told them all that Cinderella was a wimp. One day, I'm going to a book that actually gives her an interesting character and you can all get my signature.

This is another book worth re-reading again and again. It lacks all the tackiness of a typical retelling. Instead it's sweet, sincere and believable and yes, better than Ever After with Drew Barrymore.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Kate DiCamillo

This book is told from the point of view of a porcelain rabbit. Of course it is. This is coming from the woman that brought us the mouse who fell into a bowl of soup and saved the world with a spool of thread.

Edward Tulane is probably the most original story I've ever read. Edward is a selfish and tampered toy, and he has little emotion other than a love for tailored suits his owner dresses him in. Each day his owner him sets him up next to a window pane, where he watches the empty street until she returns home from school.

When his owner travels to England by ship, Edward is thrown overboard into the Atlantic and rescued by a fisherman. He is sent on a journey of owner to owner through the years. Edward is a hobo on the road with one owner, a scarecrow or a street performer with another, each with a unique story to tell that makes me want to cry for one reason or another.

While I liked reading this book as a kid, re-reading it now, with the honors-English-curse upon me, I see all sorts of literary devices and symbolism. Now I love it.

The Whipping Boy
Sid Fleischman

A classic for a slightly younger audience than others on my list, I never thought I would like this book. If elementary schools had honors English courses, this might not make the heavy-symbolism-and-other-literary-devices cut. But this book has a clever little charm all its own.

The Whipping Boy is the story of a prince who has never gone a day in his life without finding some sort of trouble to get into deserving of a whipping. But as it is illegal to whip a prince, the castle holds in reserve a whipping boy, who is called out and beat in his place as a lesson to the prince. In 90 witty little pages, Sid Fleichman tells the story of the prince and whipping boy's unlikely friendship with snappy dialogue that puts some more "mature" authors to shame.

Tuck Everlasting
Natalie Babbitt

It's not the kind of book a kid would pick up on the shelf next to  Diary of A Wimpy Kid, but anyone who has taken a peek inside Tuck Everlasting is much more impressed with what they find.

Tuck Everlasting feels just like this cover to me: a simple, lazy summer day story, but wrapped up beneath all the yellow is a paranormal twist about mysterious family who has found they will never die. Here's the really crazy part: they're not the Cullens.

Sometimes children's and middle-grade classics become overlooked, because the only reason anybody reads a classic anymore is if a grumpy little English teacher in suspenders forces you to, and that only happens in high school. Tuck Everlasting, as well as the rest of the books here, are great examples of  middle-grade classics worth your time no matter what your age, no matter your lack of a grumpy, suspend-ered English teacher standing over you shoulder.

Check back here at READ MY PRINT next Friday for the best on companion novels: one of those parallel posts.