Books to most teenagers are just stupid things they have to read in school. Something they can read and forget or just to not read at all. But to me they are so much more than that. They are an escape to a completely different world where my problems don’t exist. I can be whoever I want to be and just live happily ever after. Books are what helped me get through one of the most crushing moments in my life… My parent’s divorce. This is when books entered my life.

It all started out as a normal day. Me and my two brothers playing basketball in the yard and lately, I had begun to notice my mom not being around as much and I started to wonder why. But school that week took up my whole train of thought, yet it was still in the back of my mind. Later that weekend, on a Saturday night my dad pulled me and my two brothers outside and told us the news… My parents were getting a divorce. I was devastated. I didn’t understand why it was happening or what was going to happen, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

For the next few weeks, I stayed strong. I was more focused on school work, yet the thoughts of the divorce were swimming around my head like piranha eating at the back of my brain. That was when I turned to books. I always read books for fun, but after the divorce they became my get away. My vacation from my life. I became characters like Harry Potter or Eragon and dealt with their problems instead of my own. I read book after book until I fell asleep with a book on my chest. I distanced myself from the world and emerged myself in a world of witches, vampires, and werewolves.

My parents tried to get me to talk to a counselor, but I told her I was okay. The thing was is that I was okay, as long as I had my books. I had to escape at least a little of every day. During the day, it was all about school. When I got home, it was homework and cartoons. After that, it was me and my books. I felt at home with them. I began to back away from books and branch out. I listened to music more and kept to myself, but I never let books go. Still to this day, I still use books to escape from the chaotic, dramatic life of a teenager to become a strong, fictional character out of whatever book I happened to be reading that day.

Books are a way to transport yourself from the small town you live in to a place like district 12 to live like Katniss Everdeen. You can think of them as some stupid thing you have to read for school or you can completely change your perspective of them. I challenge to read just one and tell me afterwards what you think about books and if that book changed your life.