Lauren DeStefano Quotes

I read a lot of fantasy as a kid. I read 'The Hobbit' and all of the 'Lord of the Rings' books, but I also read a lot of realism like 'The Outsiders.'

If you would ask my mom what books I liked growing up, I liked Dr. Seuss.

When I was young, I loved a series of books by an author called Maud Hart Lovelace and the series, which is still around, I'm happy to say, is - they're the 'Betsy-Tacy' books.

I didn't read much of anything till I was 15, except Alistair MacLean and Michael Moorcock - the sword and sorcery novels - when I was about 13 or 14.

I never had a favourite book! I liked all kinds of things - science fiction, so I read Heinlen and Ray Bradbury, and I also liked reading about kids like myself, so I read Judy Blume and Norma Klein and Paula Danzinger and a lot of other writers. I also read James Herriot!

I don't read young adult or children's books, now that my grandchildren are beyond the age of my reading to them. I read reviews, and so I'm aware of what's out there. But I tend not to read the books.

I think the reason teenage fiction is so popular with adults is that adults hunger for narrative just as badly as teenagers do.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults.

I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing' was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist in Peter Hatcher. When I reached the fourth grade, I made the leap to science fiction and never looked back.

By the time I was 10 or 12, I had discovered the lure of the romance genre - and the dusty copy of 'The Thorn Birds' on my parents' bookshelf.

The first book that they gave me was Jeannie, a young teenager. I went on with her maybe ten books.

I think more people are going to continue reading YA as well as reading other books because they have learned that they can find books there which they will truly love: a teenage protagonist is close enough to adult so readers of whichever age can sympathise and empathise with them.

In elementary school, I loved the 'Bailey School Kids' series. It was about a group of classmates who would speculate whether adults in their lives were supernatural beings. I read literally every single book in the series.

I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote 'The Little Princess' and 'The Secret Garden.' And I loved the 'Little House on the Prairie' books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.

After about the age of 13, I was a romance addict. Still am, though I read just about every other genre as well. The only thing I really shy away from is political thrillers.

I was, without a sliver of a doubt, a no-good, lazy slacker of a child, and after I discovered literature, I was totally and utterly a no-good, lazy slacker of a child who read books. A lot of books, good and bad, but my favourite - the books I read and reread in my teens - were by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.

I've read the whole 'Divergent' series, the 'Pretty' series. I just read it because I find this stuff interesting to read.

When I was a kid, I loved 'Little Women.'

I was a promiscuous reader. I loved Nancy Drew books and Tom Swift - never the Hardy Boys - but I also read Dumas, Dickens, Poe, Conan Doyle, and Cornelius Ryan's war books. As to favorite character: I'm torn between Nancy, on whom I had an unseemly crush, and Edmond Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo.

If I see a now-28-year-old woman coming up to me, she's probably thinking of 'Juno' because she watched it with her parents when she was 18 years old.

My relationship with the 'Baby-Sitters Club' series bordered on addiction, and my mom got me heavily into the Trixie Belden mysteries as well. Trixie Belden was like Nancy Drew, but without the boyfriends and cute outfits, which I think is the reason my mother preferred her.

'Catcher In The Rye' was my favorite book, honestly. I read it when I was thirteen, and the book was a bit of a family heirloom because it was passed down from my grandfather to my father to my older brother and then to me.

Some of my favorite books to read are young adult books.