Why I Hate Children’s Books

When I entered the 3^rd grade, my parents cut off my allowance. Instead, we made at least one monthly trip to a now-retired Barnes and Noble, the only place I had ever spent my savings anyway.

In 5^th grade, I used my senior status to stake out an entire corner of the classroom, which was a soft patch on the carpet at the intersection of two bookshelves. Prostrated amid the scent of glue sticks and cardboard dust, I ransacked the classroom’s motley offerings, from the incomplete series – remember Dear America, The Magic Tree House, Andrew Clements, and Redwall? – to beaten classics like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Little House on the Prairie.

Twice a year, our school paid homage to literature with the Scholastic book fair. This sacred ecstasy set us coveting new releases, signed covers, and build-your-own-dinosaur puzzles, along with less enriching side-items, like the multicolored Troll Doll erasers.

Those were the days, right? Books weren’t as heavy as guilty souls, and didn’t cost you yours at the checkout counter. A complex cast of invisible friends waited on the shelves to replace any less-reliable human ones.

Harry Potter. Kate Wetherall. Artemis Fowl. Claudia Kincaid. Bobby Pendragon. Meggie Folchart. Percy Jackson. Anne Shirley. Milo. Matilda. Coraline.

And looking back, I hate them all.

Whether magical or royal or just plain gritty, these intrepid personalities have survived more adventures than I ever will…and I’m already nineteen! A Hogwarts letter comes at eleven, although I still jump when the mailbox clatters. At sixteen, Katniss heroically saves a sibling and publicly defies an authoritarian regime, with time left over to steal the hearts of her two flawlessly flawed men. Lina and Doon save Ember. I’m still not sure what happens to Lyra, but she gets to ride a polar bear.

As a kid, I didn’t just hope for adventures, I found runes in fallen leaves or left messages for ghosts on foggy windows. Magic was real. So as I took stock of my nineteen years this New Year’s, I reached a devastating conclusion: growing up happens when you no longer believe that a helicopter will drop out of the sky, a black-clad gentleman (or lady, depending on your taste) will inform you of a dormant gift which in all creation only you possess, and you will sally forth to save the world, break hearts, and rescue stranded kittens.

Maybe vestiges of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty had wedged in my brain, but as a new year rolled in, I had to wonder…is my life boring? And then I remembered I had a salad every day last semester for dinner and my mind choked on “HOLY SHIT I’M BORING!” for a solid hour. No wonder I hate children’s books, and their bright-eyed occupants.

When you live according to a routine, as students tend to live, every day of that routine ages you. You have lived a massive chunk of your life in 24 hours, knowing what waits on the other side of the next grey midnight. And the one after. A single day can tell you what to expect in the next four years of your life.

Since politicians and teachers alike have consigned our brains to Really Big Things, we’ll stick out college for now. We’ll bank on some truly epic living…after finals. But if you, like me, find yourself chaffing at the inhumane routine of life, here are a few suggested mini-ventures to reinvigorate our caffeine-fueled existence.

1. Talk to an old person. Or, at least an older person. Be it a grandparent, aunt/uncle, favorite professor, a mentor at work, even a stranger on the bus, ask someone with experience what they’ve seen of life and people and…stuff. In the extremely unlikely event that you already read everything they could ever say in an SAT book, you can settle for brightening someone else’s day.

2. Cook dinner. Simmer down your own pasta sauce, roll fresh sushi, sample the famous Pinterest skillet cookies, or outdo us all and roast a turkey. Whatever you cook, make it for friends. Knowing that another person will have to actually consume your final product will challenge you more than yet another solo spaghetti dinner. From experience, I know I’m perfectly willing to feed myself pink noodles vaguely categorized as “shrimp flavor” – as if they were cat food! – but I’ll trip over myself playing iron chef for an audience.

3. On the other hand, buy an exorbitantly priced meal – or, you know, black coffee from Strada – and eat it alone. Don’t acknowledge price, calories, or how that couple in the corner is laughing at you for sitting alone. Let yourself feel special and treated, and float in how special and treated you are.

4. Find a new album on Spotify and listen to all of it in one sitting.

5. Turn off Facebook. And actually disable it, don’t fall back on nonexistent self-discipline. Download one of those apps. And delete the cookies that save your password. Even if, unlike us mortals, you can stop yourself without divine intervention, those additional precautions make a statement. It’s a mental assertion that this time, you really mean it. If you use the Internet to break up homework, try researching shit no one needs to know. The difference between Cajun and Creole cooking, for example. French curse words. The most expensive artifact remaining from Imperial China. Your favorite musician’s high school. The ways in which Wed MD has condemned you to die. How to play the harmonica. One day, this information could prove essential to disarming a nuclear bomb, so you’re really doing the world a favor.

6. And read a favorite children’s book. The Scarlet Letter from 11^th grade does not count. Read something you feel compelled to hide from your roommate, something that fills you with the burning conviction that if you wiggle your right index finger, socks will fly and mirrors will crack. Ignore your initial self-criticism; you only think it’s dumb because you’ve stopped believing in magic. Reject the laws of science for an hour! Forget gravity, damn conservation of matter, and send the laws of motion to the deuce! You might find that the aging stops, too.