The Guardian, Spy Kids and Summer Reads

I've recently been reading articles from The Guardian, a UK newspaper. I'm most interested in children's literature, so I was pleased to discover that the guardian has a really strong children's section, which The New York Times lacks. The Guardian also publishes short stories which tend to be excellent, though maybe a little on the depressing side. Also, I've spent a good while browsing their top tens lists. The quality of the list of course depends on its author, but there are quite a few fun quirky lists/titles that are fun to browse. My favorite is Benjamin Obler's top 10 fictional coffee scenes. Delicious.

Anyways, the children's section had a article on the recent spy kid phenomonen. Kids (both girls and boys) are just devouring spy novels with teen protagonists. The author theorizes that it's because it fulfills the "make me special" desire. I agree, but I think it's also about split identity. Many of the main characters like Anthony Horrowitz's Alex Rider, struggle with maintaining their spy life along with their everyday life. I think kids can relate especially the slightly older ones who are torn between childhood and adulthood.

Also, I was trolling the internet looking for summer book lists (even though my tbr list is quite frightening) and I came across The Washington Post's summer rec chat with their readers. I don't know if another paper has done this before, but what a cool idea. They had some recs I should check out, particularly if I'm feeling brave, like the gigantic Infinite Jest, but what was most useful was a link from one of their readers, Shelfari. It has a bunch of YA books that adults should read, over 700 recs. That's going to take me a happy amount of time to get through.