About Jenn and YA Revisited

 Young Adult Revisited aka YA Revisited started with one idea: share some of the ridiculousness of the books I read as a teenager and kid with anyone who cared. Things have changed a lot since starting this blog: I met the love of my life, we moved in together, I adopted a gaggle of cats, moved houses multiple times, published an actual book that sold in real bookstores, lost my mom, lost some of my cats, lost my dad, got COVID, found new clients...

 

My history with these books goes back to my much younger years. When I was a kid, my parents both worked. On school holidays, my dad would take me to my grandma's house early in the morning. We would eat breakfast, watch television for an hour, and then hop on the bus to the Upper Valley Mall in Springfield, Ohio.

 

After wandering through the mall, my grandma would take me to either Waldenbooks or B. Dalton (the only two options) and buy me three new books. We would then window shop some more and have lunch at Friendly's before hopping on the bus and heading back to her house. She only drove once in her life, which was enough to let her know that she never wanted a driver's license! I'd then spend the rest of my day reading my new books before my dad picked me up.

 

Like a lot of us, I started with Sweet Valley Twin books. When I was in third grade, I discovered Sweet Valley High and fell in love. Unfortunately, our school librarian decided that I was too young for that series and refused to let me pick any out. My dad's coworker was a former librarian who heard that and was so angry that she ran out and bought me multiple SVH books. 

 

Nancy Drew and the adventures of the Babysitters Club would later join my reading list, fostered by my grandmother. By the time I was in sixth grade, my friends and I discovered the world of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike. 

 

Our teacher assigned up discussion groups and let us join any group as long as we read the same book. An immature classmate overheard us talking about the - ahem - adult themes in Whisper of Death. He immediately ran to tell the teacher. Upon flipping through the books, she banned Pike from the classroom. I'm grateful for my parents still buying the books after she called them and for my friends' parents for doing the same thing, which allowed us to trade Point Horror/Thriller, Fear Street, and Pike books back and forth.

 

While I would like to say that I outgrew my obsession with teen books, it's not true. I was a college student who devoured the Roswell High series and a 20-something who found some of my old books and began reading them again. 

 

Between thrift stores, book sales, yard sales, and flea markets, I managed to accumulate quite the collection, but I'm always on the hunt for something I missed. I am now a 40-something cat momma who loves reading as much as teenage-something me did. Though I neglected this blog for more than a year, I'm back with a vengeance and look forward to sharing my adventures with others.