BECOMING A MIDDLE SCHOOL READER:
APPRECIATING YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE AS AN
ADULT
Julie Morris
s a child of the 1990s, I grew up using
Accelerated Reader (AR), a software program created
by Renaissance Learning for monitoring the progress
of reading practices. It is still widely used in schools
throughout the country. Students first take an
assessment to determine their reading level and then
are supposed to choose books that are on their level,
as determined by the program. The program uses a
readability formula called ATOS to assign a level to
each book. In order to show their reading skills are
progressing, students are required to read at, or
above, their designated level. From the time I was in
sixth grade, the program determined that I had a posthigh school reading level. This posed a problem when
searching for a book in the middle school library.
In August of this year, NPR posted the results of
a vote on the top teen novels ever written. In 2001,
when I was in eighth grade, 14 of the now top 20 had
been written, and I had read absolutely zero of them.
These books were not on my reading level that I was
assigned by AR, so I was not supposed to read them at
school. While my school was not very big, with
between 75 and 100 students per grade, our library
was fairly well equipped to meet the needs of most
students. My friends were delving into J.K.
Rowling‘s Harry Potter series, but I was busy reading
Margaret Mitchell‘s Gone with the Wind and Alex
Haley‘s Roots. I did not realize it then, but my
advanced reading level was robbing me of the right to
be a young adult, at least in the literary sense, and it is
still happening to young readers today.
During my undergraduate studies, one of my
course requirements for the English Education
program was a Young Adult Literature course. It was
during my junior year of college that I began to read
the books I should have been reading 10 years prior.
The books assigned for that class included S.E.
Hinton‘s The Outsiders,
L.M. Montgomery‘s Anne of
Green Gables, Gary Paulsen‘s
Hatchet, and Lois Lowry‘s
The Giver. I was completely
enthralled by the storylines
that I had never been
exposed to. Who knew a
13-year-old could survive
on his own in the
wilderness? Or that
Greasers were tuff and Socs
were lame? These works
opened up whole new worlds to discover.
As time went on, I began to read more and more
YA literature. I finished the entire Harry Potter series
in a couple months, I own every book written by
Ellen Hopkins, and the Twilight Saga has a place on my
bookshelf right next to Gone with the Wind, along with
hundreds of other books with a fourth through tenth
grade reading level. This new found love of middle
school literature came in handy this year as I began my
first year as
a middle )͍