May
23
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Serious Series Business by Micki Uppena
I will never forget the first series that I fell in love with. The Boxcar Children, Trixie Belden, and Little House on the Prairie helped me develop deep love for character development. I loved the predictability, the family, and the comfort of knowing where the character’s journeys would lead.
As I entered middle school I began delving into darker characters and fell in love with the Flowers in the Attic series. The uncomfortableness of the story lines and the struggle these characters faced helped me get through the adolescent angst.
Harry Potter happened to me as an adult! The magic of wanting to finish the book so that you could get to the next. I couldn’t get enough! Harry Potter was binge reading at its finest. Until it wasn’t. As I was approaching book six I knew that I had to take book breaks. I had to slow down the pace. I needed to savor every word. I delved into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with apprehension not knowing that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was on it’s way. J.K. Rowling made the announcement that upon its release it would be Harry’s last appearance. By this time I had two children of my own lost in the series. We waited and waited for the book. I stood in line to be own of the first to hold the book in my hands. There were so many times while reading the book that I stopped and threw it across the room so that I would stop reading. I was not ready to let go of these characters. How could there ever be another series that helped me encounter all the emotions of family and grief, of magic and whimsy, of good and evil?
Recovering from Harry Potter was difficult. I felt gratified as a reader and knew that I would reread these books several times to keep these characters close. I quickly jumped into the Divergent series and The Hunger Games. I fell quickly in love with Tris and Four. Katniss and Peeta demonstrated so much strength. My reading life was on the road to recovery. And then one day it changed dramatically! I was reading Mockingjay and I couldn’t go on. It was not going in the direction that I needed it to go. This was not the story that I wanted! How could Suzanne Collins do this to my books? The foreshadowing in Insurgent was more than I could handle. I knew what was going to happen and I was not strong enough to read it.
These books still sit on my shelf. Bookmark in place. Waiting to be finished. Perhaps someday I’ll be ready for these stories to be told. Today is not that day. My reading life has changed dramatically and I now gravitate to stand alone books. I gravitate to my favorite authors. I gravitate to my favorite genres, but I seem to have a paralysis when it comes to series reading.
As a librarian and reading teacher I push series onto kids. I want them to get hooked and run to the library for more of their favorite characters. My hope is that they connect their lives with the characters. I want them to be able to use characters to keep pace in the timeline of their lives. With every series I recommend, I feel the hypocrisy sink in. In doing this I realized that you find the characters you need when you need them. We are looking for those characters to identify with. We are looking for characters who will help us escape. We are looking for the characters we need! As in life, the story doesn’t always go as planned, but we go on.
Micki Uppena is a proud member of the Nerdy Book Club. She is a K-12 librarian in Lancaster, Wisconsin, and is ready to admit that she abandons books. Her greatest passion is connecting readers with the books they need, when they need them. You can find her on Twitter @mic_uppena.
Nerdy Book Club 
Oh my gosh- i still have all my Trixie Belfon books!
It’s as if I wrote this post…although I’m a retired librarian and have quite a few years on you. =) But Little House & Boxcar were my first series, too. Wrinkle in Time came in junior high but I’ve never read the rest of the series. My first series when I was a library assistant was The Golden Compass by Pullman, visited Oxford because of it. A parent brought us the first book from his London trip about a boy named Harry. I sent it to cataloging but didn’t pick it up myself for a few years. I’ve always wondered if that library kept it…it could have been a first edition. Wow! When hubby retired & said he was bored, I handed him Victoria Hanley’s (a friend & fellow Coloradoan) Violet Wings, a wonderful world of fairies. He finished and was distraught that it seemed like it wasn’t finished. I informed him it was a series & said, “Welcome to my world.” That was eight years ago and we’ve devoured so many series that it would take quite a while to list them all. Because I was an elementary librarian who had a Young Adult section, hubby & I are HUGE fans. Maggie Stiefvater, Scott Westerfeld, Marissa Meyer, John Green, Brandon Sanderson, Cassandra Clare, Cat Patrick (a teacher friend’s sister in law) Jennifer Albin. Not to mention middle grade books…the year Mr. Schu was on the Newbery committee we read ALL of the honor books besides Flora & Ulysses. Paperboy by Vince Vawter, in audio, was my favorite, although not a series. Charlie Fletcher’s Ironhand series, set in London! The Magyk series by Angie Sage…LOVE the audio versions.
My son in law took a LONG time finishing Mockingjay. I can’t even remember the author or title of a series I was reading when it just went sideways for me. I remember stopping & thinking, “Wait a minute….WHAT is happening here? Nope….I’m DONE!” My adult daughter had me read Twilight. I threw the second one across the room…will NEVER finish it! As a librarian, I read Donalyn Miller’s books on reading & introduced many, many books to my students but also told them that if it didn’t grab them, don’t read it. But maybe try it again at a later time…or not.
Thank you for being a librarian! Enjoy the end of your year & have a great summer! KEEP READING!!
Oooooh, series! Babysitter’s Club and Boxcar Children, then Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden, then Anne of Green Gables, His Dark Materials, and Harry Potter. A good series is amazing :). Thank you for this post.
There is also something to savoring what we enjoy and mourning the loss of the relationship when a series ends. (This is part of why Fan Fiction is so huge.) Also, as a teacher who is looking to connect students with books, I read a book or series from this perspective. Sometimes the first book or two of a series tells me what I need to know and I move on. (And yes, I am also a “Flowers In The Attic” child between “Little House on the Prairie” and the fabulous series you mentioned reading as an adult. It’s fun to share parallel lives through books.)