Many months back I wrote this piece for Steph Bowe's celebration of books that change lives. I selected Alanna for many reasons of which you can read about in the following passages.

As I am without reading material at the moment I am pilfering my past writings to create content for the time being :) If you haven't heard or, or read, this title or the author please do so immediately. She's informed many of the YA authors that we all love and it's always great to see someone produce so much quality work!

There are many books that have made an enormous impact in my formative years. In fact there are so many that I could rattle off a list of books and characters that showed me something about the world and myself. Whether it was laughing uproariously at Anne thwacking Gilbert with a slate (Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery), admiring Lizzie and falling in love with Mr Darcy (Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen), follow Josie as she discovered the truth of her family (Looking for Alibrandi - Melina Marchetta) or experiencing Katherine’s awakened sexuality and heartbreak (Forever - Judy Blume). Not one of them changed my life but they all contributed to it greatly. Austen feels like an old friend with a violently sharp tongue, Montgomery was a reassuring quilt to cloak myself in, Blume informed some great decisions in my teen years and Marchetta allowed me to relate to a ballsy Aussie girl.

However the title, or series, I would like to put forward Tamora Pierce’s Alanna: The First Adventure as a book that changed my life. I was eleven years old when I stumbled across Alanna in my primary school library and I swiftly fell in love with the world of Tortall. You see, I wasn’t that girl who loved pink, or dreamed of riding unicorns or even crushed on Jonathon from New Kids on the Block (the 80s Jonas Brothers). I have always been pretty practical and pragmatic so Tamora Pierce’s land of sword play, magic (not the Xanadu kind) and palace intrigue was like heaven to this bookworm with tomboy tendencies.

Alanna showed me a girl working her butt off to follow her dreams and aspirations. Alanna disguised herself at ten years of age, exchanges identities with her twin brother and rode to Tortall’s castle to learn how to be a knight. She commits to hiding her gender for eight long years in order to step into a role she was destined to have. As Alan of Trebond, she earns her friends respect by working her guts out and striving to be her best, despite opposition from a loathsome bully and the risk of being found out. Alanna was truly noble. She possessed firm ideals and was loyal, selfless and stubborn as all heck. She may have been a name on a page in a book, but to me Alanna was something to aspire to. Not that I ever wanted to become a knight but the way in which she conducted herself, the quality of her friendship and the divine George Cooper (from where I developed my fascination with bad boys) made me long to be her.

After reading it once, I returned that book and time fogged my memory. I forgot the name of the Alanna and author of the book but held onto the character’s essence. For years I searched for the story of a girl training to be a knight, apparently not very well because it was thirteen years until I found it.

I was in my second year of teaching and I was perusing the Scholastic Book Club catalogue during my lunchtime. By chance I saw the new British covers for the Song of the Lioness series and from the exceedingly short blurb knew that I had finally found my beloved book, and also discovered that it was part of a series. I was actually going to find out what happened to my heroine!

I won’t blather on much more about how much I loved this series except to say that it (along with my family) helped shape my work ethic. Alanna helped inform the kind of girl I wanted to be and the kind of girl I didn’t. I could do anything the boys could, I would keep trying until it hurt and I would be strong in my convictions.

Last of all, Alanna changed my life in a way that has transformed my life this year. When I graduated university and started teaching, I stopped reading. Eighteen months isn’t an enormous period of time but those of you who are also bookworms, you know that this is ghastly. Rediscovering Alanna, becoming reacquainted with her, plunged me back into YA world and for that I would like to thank Tamora Pierce sincerely for without it I wouldn’t be persnickety or snarky or a blogger.