The Guardians Gazette No. 6

"Children's literature," or the adultification of YA

I was seven years old in this picture, which puts this either in 1992 or 1993, depending on the month.

It’s weird being a Geriatric Millennial sometimes.

I’m part of a cusp generation that was old enough to have had a formative childhood without the internet, but also young enough to be considered a digital native.¹ I’ll put it this way, I’m old enough to have had to memorize phone numbers when I wanted to call my friends, but young enough to have taught myself HTML and CSS in elementary school. Old enough to have to take computer classes to learn MS-DOS, but young enough to have never needed it. Slightly too old for Pokémon, too old for Avatar: The Last Airbender, too old for Percy Jackson, but young enough have to been Harry’s age when I first started reading the Series That Will No Longer Be Named.

In fact, I’m so old that I remember a time before YA.

I’ve been a fairly avid reader since I was young; in my fact, I would say my most formative reading years were probably between the ages …