The Series That Taught Me Something At Thirteen.

Funny Story Time!

I feel like as kids or young adult readers we all have those certain books that stick with us. It's books that taught us something, provided an escape we'll never forget, or in this case, expanded my vocabulary.

I don't know if you remember the young adult series called The Luxe by Anna Godberson. But I have core memories of seeing this series for the first time in my local Books A Million.

It's November 2009. I'm 13 years old. I was black friday shopping with my cousin, and I knew I wanted the books. I feel like I had seen the box set of this series in the sale paper before going, but I also may have seen it right when we walked in the store.  It's been a while so forgive me. 

But when I saw the set with these beautiful girls in gorgeous dresses. I wanted it so much. It was girly and fancy, and I was so excited to get it. My cousin bought it for me for Christmas, and I was so happy. 

Fast forward to diving into reading this series. Now, for this post I went back and looked up the age range for the luxe series and it says 9th-12th grade. I was probably in 9th grade at this point, or about to go into it, and when we had to do reading tests in school, I always scored on a college level. No book ever felt like it was hard to read. 

What I didn't know about this series however, was that it was historical. I remember doing mostly okay while reading the books, and couldn't put them down. My mom was reading them alongside with me as she often did and loved them too. 

But, since book one, and there are four books, I kept getting confused everytime the characters talked about going out and riding on their yachts. (These are rich teens. Think Gossip Girl but in 1889.) The activities and things they were doing on the yachts didn't make sense and any chapters with the mention of yachts had me so confused. I didn't tell my mom and just kept reading because it wasn't much of the story, and I looked over it. 

I finally got to book four and the language around the yachts got so confusing that I finally stopped to ask my mom about it. 

 "Why are they doing all these things while riding yachts? It doesn't make sense!" I said.

 She just looks and me and says, "What are you talking about?"

"You know the yachts they are always riding on, they can't do these things while riding animals." 

I proceed to show her the word in the book, and then she bursts out laughing. Have you guessed what I did yet? I read the word "Yacht" a boat, as "Yak" the animal! I'm laughing so hard writing this. 

And then finally, all the pieces came together. These rich teens in 1889 weren't riding their yaks all around and doing crazy things on the backs of animals, but instead floating on a boat. Everything finally clicked. 

And that's how I learned the word Yacht, and will never forget it! 

What's a word that took you hearing it, or asking for you to finally know what it means? Got any funny stories like this one? Share with me in the comments!