Author puts 'A' in 'YA'

Lauren Myracle has been called Satan, a pedophile and a corrupter of youth, yet her series of books about a trio of Atlanta teenagers, written entirely in text messages, has sold a total of 1.5 million copies.

Many people would prefer that she not write about teenagers dancing topless at a boozy frat party, or smoking marijuana to impress a friend with benefits.

Last year, Myracle's so-called Internet girls series — consisting of the titles "ttyl," "ttfn," and "l8r, g8r" (ask a young person to decipher the texting language) — topped the list of challenged and banned books nationwide, according to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.

(Angela Maycock, its assistant director, estimated that only 20 to 25 percent of challenges to books on school or public library shelves are reported.) Earning such a ranking requires a groundswell of people going to their libraries and declaring, "This is trash," Maycock explained.

Why?

"Because then I know," she replied.

After reading "The Fashion Disaster That Changed My Life," one mother of a 12-year-old girl wrote to say she disliked how giggling seventh-graders dared one another to scream "honey-roasted penis!" at a sleepover party as a prank on the host mother, who thought they were saying "peanuts."

Myracle, who says she often answers vitriolic letters because she's a good Southern girl, wrote back, Kids do talk about sex in the seventh grade.

Lauren's life is very much threaded through her children's lives," said Myracle's sister, the novelist Susan Rebecca White, adding, "It's very different than the parents in a Charlie Brown novel where the adults are outside of the world the kids live in.

Thursday nights, Myracle and her sons have a standing date with Chelsea the Terrible, their name for the personal trainer who makes them lunge and lift.

At her private Christian high school, she was a friend to loners, more interested in hanging o