Sarah's writing journal

As well as spending time with my kids, I seem to devote a lot of time to finding books for them to read. Books which, of course, they fall upon with glee and joy (hahaha!). But recently looking through the teen girl bookshelves made me think about the differences between what I used to enjoy reading, and what I think my daughter should like. There's something good (to me) about having her inspired by butt kicking princesses, but actually when I was her age, the girls I wanted to read about were good girls - the Jane Eyre and Emma types. The books I liked featured order, and discipline, and people all getting together at the end of the day, no matter how many 'adventures' they'd been on. Little Women was perhaps my ideal book, although embarrasingly I always preferred Amy to Jo, and since I'm confessing, I am the only female I have ever met who wanted to be Ann, and not George, in the Famous Five. Why on earth would anyone choose to hang out with creepy (and bossy) Julian, when you could stay at camp where it was warm, and at least you'd be able to get some peace? So what I'm thinking is whether I've got it wrong as a book-buying parent. Rather than buying the books I think I'd like to read if I were a teenager now, I ought either to suggest books that are the equivalent of home-baked cakes and warm baths (as those books were for me), or, even better, let her choose her reading herself! Maybe for teenagers, there's enough chaos in the world already, without finding it between the covers of your book? Or maybe I'm just a wimp. Hmmm.. no need to answer that one.

And my writing prompt for today is a random word from the dictionary - sweptwing - having wings swept (usually) backwards.