Teeny Bopper Summer Faves

  When I was eleven I began to develop a new taste in books. Growing up my family preferred Jane Austen to J.K Rowling. Fairytale fantasy books weren't foreign to me, but they weren't overly encouraged either. 

One day whilst at the library, I happened upon a book that caught my eye. Ella Enchanted. My mother and I first watched the movie when I was eight. I had always wondered about the book, but never actually ventured into reading it. Until that one day at the library, when it was nearing closing time and I still hadn't made a decision. I took the book. 

The first line is forever engraved in my memory, having read it probably a dozen times, "That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me. She meant to bestow a gift." 

The story of Ella of Frell was the most prefect story in all the world to me. The moment I finished it, I started it again. Then I found more books like it. Books like these were unlike any other I had heard before. I couldn't stop myself. 

This is the point in my life where I went from Tom boy to girly. Fairy tales lead me to girly tales. I'm not sure if my particular taste in literature from ages eleven to thirteen was that great, but it was changing. I started reading things like "The Clique" and I aspired to be like shallow snobs such as Massie Block instead of bad ass Heroines like Ella of Frell. 

Then fourteen hit and I decided I was practically an adult and I needed to read more adult like books. This meant teen fiction as opposed to middle school fiction. Fairy tales didn't really have much of a place in my life anymore. I was all for "Gossip Girl" and "Georgia Nicholson". 

Then one fine day my mother brought home "The Princess Academy". I practically hurled when I saw it. I wasn't planning on opening it either, but when I ran out of new things to read I got desperate. That's when I met Shannon Hale. Shannon Hale and Gail Carson Levine had something in common: Fairytales for the not so average damsel. I fell completely in love and bought some of her other books. Then I remembered Ella and read her again. 

Fourteen is the age where I finally found balance. I loved Fantasy adventure, but I also liked Girly Fiction.

These are the books I read that summer that spoke loudest to me: 

13 Little Blue Envelopes

 Beastly

Princess Academy

Gathering Blue

Goose Girl

Inside Out and Back Again

Book of a Thousand Days

Hunger Games