I recently began reading a book that was recommended to me by numerous people. Because so many of these people had different literary tastes from one another, but all agreed on this book, I was sure I would enjoy it too. The topic certainly spoke to me, but then I began reading. After the first few sentences, I wanted to put the book down, but I made myself finish the first chapter. It didn’t get any better for me, and I was disappointed because I really wanted to like it.
Before I had my son, I would have continued reading. But not anymore. There is only so much time in the day, and if I have some “me time”, I just can’t spend it reading something that will get better by chapter three. I know I may miss out on some good literature because of this, but it is what it is, and it got me to thinking about my favorite books and their first lines.
I compiled a list below of YA and MG books I loved (both pre and post kid), along with their first sentence(s). To be fair, I do give a book at least a page, so if the following sentences don’t speak to you, maybe reading the first page is in order. 
I’d also like to add that there are so many more books I wanted to include, ones I loved just as much, but due to availability, these are the ones that made the list first.
1. THE YEAR OF SECRET ASSIGNMENTS* by Jaclyn Moriarty: “QUICK! Before you read another word, write your own FULL name in every box on this page!”
2. SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson: “It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.”
3. DREAMLAND by Sarah Dessen: “My sister Cass ran away the morning of my sixteenth birthday.”
4. IF YOU COME SOFTLY by Jacqueline Woodson: “My mother calls to me from the bottom of the stairs, and I pull myself slowly from a deep sleep.”
5. THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak: “HERE IS A SMALL FACT. You are going to die.”
6. JUST AS LONG AS WE’RE TOGETHER by Judy Blume: “’Stephanie is into hunks,’ my mother said to my aunt on Sunday afternoon.”
7. AFTER THE RAIN by Norma Fox-Mazer: “’Look down on this scene,’ Rachel writes in her notebook. ‘Three people in a kitchen, sitting around a table. A man. A woman. And a girl.’”
8. ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by L.M. Montgomery: “MRS. RACHEL LYNDE lived just where the Avonlea road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place….”
9. THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett: “When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.”
10. BLUBBER by Judy Blume: “My best friend, Tracy Wu, says I’m really tough on people.”
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