After responding to a comment about this uproar over my earlier comments comparing a young adult book to an adult fantasy series, I realized that an even more interesting facet might be readers’ stories about whether they think novels they read as kids actually influenced their behavior in any way.

In other words, did reading a made-up story result in any real-life action - for good or bad??

It isn’t easy to say that reading x resulted in y. But you may think it had an effect on your actions.

For instance: this is pretty nerdy, but as a young kid (around middle school and younger) I loved dogs. (I still love them, but I was pretty animal-obsessed as a girl.) I read a lot of dog stories, fiction and nonfiction before I was a teen, even the  old-fashioned stuff like “Lad of Sunnybank” by Albert Payson Terhune (published in 1929, I believe).

Anyway, his dog stories, along with other books, reinforced, if nothing else, my interest in dogs and helped inspire me to save up for a show-quality golden retriever, take it to dog classes and shows.

The interest was already there. But the books reinforced it and may have helped lead to some of the action. I certainly think they did.

So if girls read nothing but books about gossipy cliques, shopping or drugs or sex…. nevermind. Just share a story about your own history with books if you want.