Epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson thought he’d outgrown reading at the age of 11, until his teacher handed him Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane – and everything changed

I was saved by a teacher.

I was in eighth grade (year 9 in UK) . A gangly new teen, suddenly uncertain. Being younger had made sense to me – by the time I hit sixth grade, I felt I had this kid thing down. But then I was hit by the tempest of uncertainty, wonder, and awkwardness that is puberty. Suddenly, everyone around them seemed to know things I didn’t. They were all so confident. My peers understood, at least from my perspective, how to be teens. Where had they learned? How could they project such certainty, such belongingness?

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I’d always belonged before. I had friends to play with, I had a cool sled to show off on snow days, and I had the best video games. And suddenly, like a techie with last year’s model of iPhone, none of that mattered. And I entered the hardest period in my life.

I suspect my story isn’t unique. In fact, looking back, I’m certain those teens who appeared so confident were all inwardly feeling just like me. The social bizarreness that is the transition into adulthood is nothing new – it might be the single most unifying experience in human culture. I’ve wondered if this is the hidden secret behind the explosive success of the young adult genre. We might disagree on politics, religion, social issues – but boy, the one thing we can get together on is this: being a teenager sure did suck.

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For me, it was a period where I was floating, alone. I didn’t know who I was yet, which was both terrifying and wonderful. I was the proverbial blank slate – a phrase that comes from ancient Rome, where they wrote notes on waxen slates that could be heated to melt away the previous notes.

That is when books came into my life, specifically the book Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly.

I’d read books before, of course. When younger, I’d even had spurts where I’d enjoyed reading. But as I’d grown older, something happened to me that happens (I’ve since learned) to a lot of boys as they hit fifth and sixth grade (UK equivalents are year six and year seven). They fall out of reading. For me, it was a growing boredom with books. For some reason, they just didn’t grip me anymore, as I remembered them doing when I was a child.

A lot of this was because each of these books felt the same to me. They often had shiny awards on the cover, and they were about some young kid like me, a little lost like me. They often had a pet that died, or a family member that died.

And they bored me to no end.

I wonder about that now, as these books should have worked. Conventional wisdom says that that’s what teens want, right? Kids struggling like them? I kept reading these books saying, “Yeah, yeah. I know that. I’ve felt that. I’m bored of that.”

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And then my teacher, named Mrs Reeder by coincidence, handed me Dragonsbane. This book should not have worked. It’s about a middle-aged woman struggling to decide if she should dedicate more time to practicing her magic, or if she should spend more time with her family. Basically it’s a midlife crisis book. And it fascinated me.

Here was a person very different from me, yet I could – through the capable writing– understand this person who was more like my mother than she was like me. This was mixed with engaging worldbuilding, wondrous exploration, and… well, dragons!

I’ve read a lot of snide takedowns of the fantasy genre, often written by book reviewers on newspaper websites much like this one [editors note, not on the Guardian children’s books site you don’t Brandon!]. The thing they always ignore is this sense of wonder that a great fantasy book inspires. For me, Dragonsbane was the ultimate eureka moment. I saw that books could be exciting, engaging, and adventuresome, while also letting me see through the eyes of someone very different from myself.

I wonder how often we assume we know what teens want. This isn’t intended to dismiss the YA genre (which I love; I wish books like Sabriel or Harry Potter had been more available to teens when I was looking for something to love). But it always makes me think. How often are we trying to force kids to read things they should like, rather than trying to figure out what will specifically captivate them?

That’s what Mrs Reeder did for me, and I will be grateful for that until the day I die.

Brandon Sanderon’s third and final Reckoners book Calamity is out and available from the Guardian bookshop, as are Firefight (book one) and Steelheart (book two), and most of Brandon Sanderson’s other books too!



Fantasy live Twitter chat this Sunday:

Come and join us (@GdnChildrensBks) on Twitter on Sunday 28 Feb 5-6pm using #gdnteenfantasy when we’ll be discussing all things fantasy books with Samantha Shannon @say_shannon, Alwyn Hamilton @AlwynFJH, Zoe Marriott @ZMarriott, Lucy Saxon @Lucy_Saxon, Sally Green @Sa11eGreen, Taran Matharu @TaranMatharu1 and Victoria Aveyard @VictoriaAveyard

And look out for more fantasy books content all this weekend on the Guardian children’s books site.