The noise and bustle of the airport echoed in Lauren’s ears as she moved forward in the security line. She hoisted her nearly bursting carry-on onto the conveyor belt that lead into the x-ray machine, and looked at the security guard for approval as she stepped through the metal detector. She paused as she looked to the side and saw that her bag was being examined. “Please step to the side, ma’am,” the security guard droned. With panic tightening in her throat, she quickly obeyed as the guard opened her bag and began searching through it. Once they were finished, not finding anything of consequence, they handed her the small suitcase with its contents spewing over the sides. Lauren sighed and began strategizing how she would fit all of her beloved books back into the bag. She was determined, though. Her books would stay by her side, just as they always had been.
A much younger Lauren was sitting on the cushy bean-bag chairs in her kindergarten classroom when her parents walked into the room with her teacher. She looked up innocently from the pages of her book and smiled. The corners of her lips began to fall at the sight of worried look on her mother’s face, when her teacher asked, “Lauren, can you read this sentence for me?” She looked away from her teacher to focus on the page. As she slowly and determinedly began to read, her parents gasped as pained smiles paralyzed their faces.
It shouldn’t surprise them that Lauren was reading at such a young age, for her mother has read to her for hours-on-end each day, even before she was born. “She would sit there and read,” Lauren explained, “Read through books all of the time. They didn’t have to be young kid books; they were just books she was reading, but she would read it out loud so I could hear it.” With a love of words and stories ingrained in her psyche, Lauren has grown up and thrived within literature. “We used to have reading competitions at elementary school,” Lauren recounts, “and I always won because they were ‘who can read the most books over the summer?’ competitions. I would win and they would give me a bag of books, but I usually owned all of them anyway."
Since her freshman year of high school, Lauren guesses she has read about 2,000 to 3,000 young adult books. These staggering numbers imply that Lauren has read as many books as some professional editors. One might say this makes her somewhat of an expert in the field of young adult literature. However, she wouldn’t view herself that way; she just really loves to read. Her books have taken her on a number of adventures. She has been exposed to situations, ways of thinking, cultures and challenges she would not have experienced otherwise; they have also made her own afflictions easier to understand.
Like any teenager, Lauren has faced many challenges, but not once has she stopped reading. In fact, she has often sought to identify with her favorite characters and confide in them, looking to them for advice and guidance. When she was at the climax of her relationship with her childhood “crush,” she buried herself in silly romance novels and cheesy love songs. She loved to dream and often fanaticized, “This could be my life!” Despite her wishes, this crush broke her heart and abandoned her, leaving her to realize, “Oh, my life isn’t a book.” At that moment, she decided to move on from these childhood fantasies and began picking up more realistic contemporary fiction. “Have you heard of Sarah Dessen?” she asked. “Her books are really realistic and deal with real girl issues.” What are ‘real girl issues’? Romance and fitting-in, of course, are most prevalent, but more important issues like death and eating disorders are penetrating young peoples’ lives everywhere. Authors like Dessen have realized this, and reach out to these young women, giving them a picture of what could be; of hope.
The only place Lauren could find real answers to her life problems was a place she could be confronted within her own mind—inside the pages of a book. Winter Girls by Laurie Halse Anderson is about a girl with anorexia whose best friend dies of bulimia. “There was a time period where I didn’t want to eat anything because I thought I was fat,” Lauren said. “It wasn’t full-on anorexia, but it was . . . I was pretty close.” Winter Girls helped her realize what she was doing to herself. Its first person narration allowed her to approach and examine the mind of the main character and experience her thought process. She was suffering from a very personal and extremely dangerous mental and physical disorder, and this book helped Lauren realize that she wasn’t alone. “You have a certain thought, and then you read it in a book and it clicks. It makes a huge impact on people,” she explained. This deep personal struggle prepared her to deal with the uncontrollable events of the future, and reminded her that she could still rely on her cherished books.
Lauren was unexpectedly separated from a good friend when he recently committed suicide. Before he died, she had read Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, a chilling story about a girl that commits suicide and leaves cassette tapes recounting the events leading up to her death. The first time she read it, she thought the book had a sad and powerful message, but after the death of her friend she read it again and the story had changed. “It had a completely new meaning. I was reading it and literally crying because it was so meaningful to me,” she explained. That event changed her in more ways than she realized. It inspired her to take control, to move on, and to value life—she learned the importance of living.
Author Henry David Thoreau wrote, “A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. . . What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.” Youth is the time where young people’s minds are most pliable; the time they are desperately curious to find their standing in life. As teenagers realize how to use what they read to change their lives, they will grow up to be imaginative and enlightened adults.
“I’m going on another trip this summer,” Lauren explained. “This time, we’re flying into England then taking a cruise into Scotland, Ireland, and Iceland.” She’s still hauling around her books. “I’ve been reading a lot of travel novels,” she said. However, it will be different this time, and not just because she has a nook and won’t have to worry about cramming a library into a backpack. This time, her books won’t be her friends, they will be her guides. “I still love reading,” she said, “but it’s not the only thing in my life. I take the lessons I learn from books and apply them to my experiences.” While exploring the British Isles, discovering history, and trying to convince the people that not all Americans are horrible, she will look to her books with contentment, knowing that she is writing a story of her own.
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