Tristan Layton

Ever since I started ChaosKitchen, I’d never really felt complete with the content I was writing. As two years slowly progressed, I had become less and less accountable with my food blog, as I felt I wasn’t as passionate about cooking, food and restaurant reviews as I once was. In fact, until the end, it had been five months since my last post, in which I promised to update frequently. So a week or two ago, I decided that I was done with ChaosKitchen and needed something fresh, something new, and something that I was truly passionate about. So in this blog, I aim to explore my true interests in writing, books (literature in general), social media, anthropology, and social commentary from a young teenagers point of view.

I would like to begin this blog with a theory that I’ve been processing for quite some time – The Stages of Literacy. Normally at about the ages of 4 to 8, 9 to 14, and at about mid-adolescence to late teens, most people make a transition in the Stages of Literacy. Normally at around age 5 or 7, most kids put down the picture books and read a good Goosebumps or Aussie Bites book. Later, at around age 9 to 14, kids put down the thin, first-person comedies and move on to something with a more captivating storyline and a smaller font. This stage is when most boys get into spy novels or science fiction, or in the case of many girls, cheesy vampire love stories.

Recently, I made the third and final transition in the stages of literacy, which involves walking away from the Teen-Young Adult section of the bookstore and moving onto the Adult fiction. As I know I may have made this decision prematurely, I’ve allowed myself a few restrictions, the main regulation being that I can still hop back to the YA section to continue a series, as last year I read the Gone Series by Michael Grant and became addicted. However, with books 5 and 6 yet to come, I’ve thought of this transition as me dipping my toe in the water. This decision was mainly inspired by the classic, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, as I saw it on the other side of the bookstore and couldn’t resist.

You’re probably thinking ‘Why is this such a big deal?’ Well, for a lot of people my age it isn’t. But as moving from one side of the bookstore to the other may seem insignificant to you, I’ve found it to be a milestone in the progression of my reading. For those avid readers out there, don’t you remember putting down Harry Potter to read a good classic or some quality crime fiction?

So in conclusion, I dare you to gather your courage, take a leap of faith and read that one book that you’ve always thought to be a little out of your reach. I want to hear your stories, so comment below, like my page on Facebook or tweet me at @tristanlayton.