An old adage states that the cream always comes to the top. When that “saying” was applied to the Young Adult Summer Library Program at the Troy Public Library, the cream came to the top three-fold.

Laura Cain, Havyn Dates and Jocelyn Jointer were the top readers in an outstanding group of Young Adult readers, said Teresa Colvin, children and young adults’ librarian.

“We have a great group of young adults who enjoy reading but these three came to the top,” Colvin said. “We congratulate them on a job well done but they don’t just read during the summer. They are avid year around recreational readers.”

Colvin presented Havyn and Laura medals and achievement certificates at the library Thursday. Jocelyn was participating in the Performance Intensive drama camp at Troy University and was unable to attend. Laura, a rising ninth-grader at Charles Henderson High School, read 60 books over the summer. Most of them were fiction.

Laura said she is a fan of Harry Potter and has read all of JK Rowling’s books about the young wizard and she’s seen the Harry Potter movies. “I like the books better than the movies because, with the books, I can make the characters the way I want them to be,” Laura said. “I was a little disappointed with the movies because the characters weren’t like I thought they would be. That’s why I like to read. I like to use my imagination.”

Laura can’t pinpoint when she fell in love with books but she knows that she was about four years old when her older siblings used her as a sounding board for their summer reading. Finally, she had enough and cried, “No more books!”

But she didn’t mean it. “Everybody read to me,” she said. Her mom, dad, grandparents and siblings, too.

Havyn also likes to read book about the supernatural. And, although she doesn’t believe in ghosts, they are among her favorite book characters. “Ghosts are interesting and I read a lot of ghost stories but I like mysteries the best,” she said.

Havyn participated in the Murder Mystery Lock-In at the library last week and thought she had solved the mystery. But, when she examined the evidence closer, she changed her mind.

“I had it right at first, though,” she said with a smile.

Havyn is a rising seventh-grader at Goshen and said her interest in reading began when she checked out “a thousand” books one summer.

“I love to read,” Havyn said. “For four years, I’ve been a top reader in the accelerated reading program. “I pull a lot of ‘all nighters.’ I read a vampire book that had 500 pages and I read straight for eight hours.”

Laura pulls some “all-nighters,” too and is ready for a nap when the sun comes up. The young adult readers have their futures planned. Laura is self-proclaimed “Grammar Nazi” and plans to be an English professor.

Havyn was inspired about “Grey’s Anatomy” and wants to be a cardiologist. Colvin said their love of reading will benefit them no matter what career paths they choose.