From Nerdy Book Club:
I was an absolute book fanatic from the start. Or, to be more precise, I was an absolute PICTURE book fanatic. When adults asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always the same: picture book illustrator.
Every week as a child, my mother took my brother and sister and me to our public library. Every week I brought home an enormous stack of books. In the evening, I would sit on the living room couch next to my mother as she read the words to books like Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Where the Wild Things Are to me. And I would interpret the pictures for her.
. . . .
Years passed, me checking out as many books as I could carry and drawing nonstop. And then one day, around the start of a new school year, everything changed. Suddenly I was too old for picture books. It was time for me to move on to middle grade books.
I could not process this idea. How could I be too old for picture books? I wanted to BE a picture book illustrator!
Besides, middle grade books were serious. Middle grade books were realistic. And worst of all, they had no pictures!
But at least I had Robert Newton Peck’s “Soup” books. These middle grade books were about a boy and his buddy named Soup, who ran around together having adventures and getting into all kinds of trouble. In short, these books were about me. I almost wondered if Robert Newton Peck wasn’t somewhere nearby, watching my life unfold and scribbling down brilliant, new material in his notebook.
. . . .
But eventually my teacher pressed me to broaden my horizons. I had no such interest, so when asked to choose from a cart of books that had been wheeled into our classroom, I picked a book called A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith. Judging by the cover illustration, it was practically the long awaited third installment in the Soup series– two buddies, running around (this time among blackberry bushes), having adventures and getting into trouble.
One should never judge a book by its cover. (Spoiler alert) Unlike the Soup books, the Soup-like buddy in A Taste of Blackberries dies. I was shocked. I was confused. It had never occurred to me that such a thing could happen in a book. Was that even allowed? I had so much to think about. Despite my best efforts, my horizons had indeed been broadened. It was an intriguing feeling.
Link to the rest at Nerdy Book Club
So much childhood hatred for books where the kids were sick or they died. Not much love for the books where the kids were grieving, either. Almost all after-school specials were about something terrible.
Of course, this did not apply to Star Blazers, aka Space Battleship Yamato. Or Agatha Christie murder mysteries. In those, death was heroic, or something you worked hard to stop. Life had meaning.
The moral of the story clearly was that adults love to write books and tv shows that make kids feel miserable and sad, but you can find fun books and tv by sticking to genre.
At one time I taught English in an inner-city high school. I got my students reading by bringing in a large selection of comics and magazines. The kids were great. I never had any problem with theft except of my Mad Magazines. I solved that problem by hiding them in the box with the reading cards that a previous teacher had used. The kids would never open those boxes!