books you liked as a preteen

I should note that excluding the Great Brain, i LOVED all of those books MADLY and get really WARM and FUZZY when i conjure up memories of reading them.

the Great Brain I just "liked".

http://www.kyrene.org/schools/brisas/sunda/litpack/sm_frecklecover.jpg

Tom Swift and His Flying Lab
Tom Swift and His Jetmarine
Tom Swift and His Giant Robot
Tom Swift and His Outpost in Space
Tom Swift and Ultrasonic Cycloplane
Tom Swift and His Deep Sea Hydrodome
Tom Swift and His Spectromarine Selector
Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar
Tom Swift and the Astroid Pirates
Tom Swift and His Repelatron Skyway
Tom Swift and the Mystery Comet
Tom Swift and the Captive Planetoid
Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter
Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule
Tom Swift and the Galaxy Ghosts

Hardy Boys Casefiles #1 Dead On Target
Hardy Boys Casefiles #2. Evil, Inc.
Hardy Boys Casefiles #3. Cult of Crime
Hardy Boys Casefiles #4. The Lazarus Plot (this one's great)
Hardy Boys Casefiles #5. Edge of Destruction
Hardy Boys Casefiles #6. The Crowning Terror
Hardy Boys Casefiles #7. Deathgame
Hardy Boys Casefiles #8. See No Evil
Hardy Boys Casefiles #9. The Genius Thieves
Hardy Boys Casefiles #10. Hostages of Hate
Hardy Boys Casefiles #11. Brother Against Brother
Hardy Boys Casefiles #12. Perfect Getaway
Hardy Boys Casefiles #13. The Borgia Dagger
Hardy Boys Casefiles #14. Too Many Traitors
Hardy Boys Casefiles #15. Blood Relations
Hardy Boys Casefiles #16. Line of Fire
Hardy Boys Casefiles #17. The Number File (Missing!)
Hardy Boys Casefiles #18. A Killing in the Market
Hardy Boys Casefiles #19. Nightmare in Angel City
Hardy Boys Casefiles #20. Witness to Murder
Hardy Boys Casefiles #21. Street Spies
Hardy Boys Casefiles #22. Double Exposure
Hardy Boys Casefiles #23. Disaster for Hire
Hardy Boys Casefiles #24. Scene of the Crime
Hardy Boys Casefiles #25. The Borderline Case (Never read?) Hardy Boys Casefiles #26. Trouble in the Pipeline
Hardy Boys Casefiles #27. Nowhere to Run
Hardy Boys Casefiles #28. Countdown to Terror
Hardy Boys Casefiles #29. Thick as Thieves
Hardy Boys Casefiles #30. The Deadliest Dare

Super Mystery Series #1-4, 6-13 (Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys together)
Double Crossing
A Crime for Christmas
Shock Waves
The Paris Connection
Buried in Time
Mystery Train
Best of Enemies
High survival
New Year's Evil

Dragonlance:
Dragons of Autumn Twilight
Dragons of Winter's Night
Dragon's of Spring Dawning
Legend of Huma
Stormblade
Weasel's Luck
Kaz the Minotaur
The Gates of Thorbardin
Galen Beknighted
Time of the Twins
Test of the Twins
War of the Twins

Kindred Spirits
Wanderlust
Dark Heart
The Oath and the Measure
Steel and Stone
The Companions
Darkness and Light
Kendermore
Brothers Majere
Riverwind the Plainsman (this was my favorite)
Flint the King
Tanis, the Shadow Years
Reign of Ishtar
War of the Lance

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life the Universe and Everything
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
Mostly Harmless

Neverending Story

Chronicles of Prydian:
The Book of Three
The Black Cauldron
The Castle of Llyr
Taran Wanderer
The High King

Madeline L'Engle's
A Wrinkle in Time
Wind in the Door
Many Waters
Swiftly Tilting Planet

Susan Cooper's:
Over Sea, Under Stone
The Dark is Rising
Greenwitch
The Grey King
Silver on the Tree

Beverly Cleary's:
Dr. Mister Henshaw
Strider

Farley Mowat:
The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
Owls in the Family
Never Cry Wolf
A Whale for the Crossing

James Herriot:
If Only They Could Talk
It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet
Let Sleeping Vets Lie
Vet in Harness
The Lord God Made Them All
Every Living Thing

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http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/thestand.jpg

did a book report on it in 4th grade. so fucking hallucinatory and awesome.

I'm fibbing about one of these

Scariest book my step-mother had laying around the house. The story was old hat, but the PICTURES inside. Good grief. In the middle of the book, they had actual photographs of the Manson crime scenes. Obviously, you can't sell a book at K-Mart with actual disfigured bloody corpses, so the editors of the book CUT THE CORPSES OUT OF THE PHOTOS. What was left were these bloody carpets and couches with a white outline cut out of it, leaving my impressionable mind the opportunity to fill in the rest.

There's a Photoshopped photo that I've posted around here in the past of a hotel bed. Police were trying to track down a child pornographer, and the hotel bed had featured one of the victims on it. The police airbrushed the child out and then submitted it to the public to see if anyone could recognize the hotel. That picture is just as scary to me as the Helter Skelter pics.

About this title: A mysterious fog changes all but a few people in a western town into plants.

I remember one part where one of the main characters gets his brain erased, lies down, and starts playing with his feet. For some reason that freaked me out.

The Plant People by Dale Carlson
Sort of like a fotonovel ™, but with fewer pictures. This one was meant to attract 70s era reluctant readers with its photographic illustrations of monster movie plant-people. See Also: A Wild Heart by Dale Carson in which a young lady covets a ring, visits a motel and is threatened by a young man holding a chair.

Haha, reluctant readers. OR KIDS WHO READ EVERYTHING THEY COULD GET THEIR HANDS ON.

That's it! Because the aliens needed more oxygen or something like that.

no - it wasn't laura ingalls wilder. Was it The Day No Pigs Would Die? Maybe it was a pig that had the goiter and not a cow?

now that i think about it i think directed reading was traumatic to me. i liked to read up to about 6th grade

me too, but my first books at secondary school (11-16) were 1. book with unidentified green stuff encrusted on the pages (story itself was OK but I dreaded touching that thing, the teacher wouldn't let me have a different copy) and 2. Nicholas Nickleby which was 700 pages long and I thought was the dullest thing ever, and bam, I pretty much only read magazines for the next decade

in primary school it had been like, oh wow, you read for fun, doesn't matter what, that is really smart and good of you! and in secondary school it was, oh, you read science fiction and "young adult" fiction for fun, but you really need to be reading overlong Victorian novels to have any worth as a human being

though aged 11-12 I also discovered rock music, guitars and an ever-increasing variety of ways to waste time on the computer, so it may not be all my English teacher's fault after all

i always forget how biased secondary school reading lists are towards crap victorian fiction

i think one family holiday i read like a dozen hardy boys books. and didn't leave the hotel except when forced.

oh yeah we read old yeller in 7th grade, another ma and pa dog book

we also read "all summer in a day" by ray bradbury. i haven't read any ray bradbury since then.

sentimental, moralistic, genteel, "timeless" books that kids are supposed to like.

I hear the rest of what you're saying about directed reading and people telling you what to do with your brain, but it just isn't true that Newbery books or anything that has lasted 100 years is necessarily moralistic and over-sentimental (not counting that maybe your personal bar for "acceptable sentimentality" is very low). Things that were boring and had no purpose other than moralizing to kids have actually died off to the point where they're unknown to the gen pop and seen as jokes to the kid's book world. I mean, who's heard of Elsie Dinsmore in this day and age??

i'm sorry i mentioned kids book awards

I read all the beverly cleary books my library had: ramona, henry beasley, ralph the mouse...

but I guess that's pre-preteen.

i actually heard someone waxing clever about goosebumps the other day. i think a lot of the more 'bubblegum' (optimistic def.) or 'marketable' or 'exploitative' stuff seems like it does require a real decline in terms of critical faculties / reading skills to really work tbh

No really those ARE pre-teen! Aka "middlegrade". The age range for that is about 7-11 (I misspoke above: picture books are age-graded 3-7 years old).

Er xp

waxing nostalgic. i don't know why i wrote 'clever'

(xp.)

hmm but I remember goosebumps definitely being a step above those books in my reading curve.

my favorite book of all time as a preteen:

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quite possibly my favorite artist of all time

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-74Lgo5mIZ8/RubC3HSA5sI/AAAAAAAAANw/7At7igu8O3c/s400/Darling%2BFight.gif

i think a lot of the more 'bubblegum' (optimistic def.) or 'marketable' or 'exploitative' stuff seems like it does require a real decline in terms of critical faculties / reading skills to really work tbh

― thomp, Thursday, February 11, 2010 9:43 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is def true but kids are kinda dumb

something so wholesome and 50s about his drawings. a beverly cleary book is pretty high up on my list of places to be reincarnated in

i actually heard someone waxing clever about goosebumps the other day.

When I worked in the Children's Sect of a bookstore and people asked for Goosebumps I would direct them there, but also recommend John Bellairs. <3 <3 <3 The House with a Clock in Its Walls.

xp Enormouse Egg has a new cover now, although they kept the interior illus. ;_;

this is def true but kids are kinda dumb

See, I think thinking that is the kiss of death to ever writing, editing, or selling a book to kids.

as a kid i was less smart than i am now so i preferred to read books that required less critical thinking

this is def true but kids are kinda dumb

See, I think thinking that is the kiss of death to ever writing, editing, or selling a book to kids.

― Let's see how tough Aquaman is once we get him in the water. (Laurel), Thursday, 11 February 2010 14:53 (4 minutes ago)

explain the success of captain underpants then

Liking things that are silly doesn't make kids dumb! Actually you get a lot smarter and more able to learn/remember when you're in a playful mood and not feeling any anxiety.

Plus if the grown men I know are anything to go by, the appeal of underpants-type humor hasn't worn off a bit.

PANTY RAID WHO'S WITH ME

have you read any captain underpants books? i am a devotee of toilet humour and those are not good toilet humour

No, I've never heard of Captain Underpants at all.

But duh you can always sell complete shit by appealing to people's worser natures instead of their better ones. Look how popular reality television is.

i'm sorry i said dumb

But duh you can always sell complete shit by appealing to people's worser natures instead of their better ones. Look how popular reality television is.

― Let's see how tough Aquaman is once we get him in the water. (Laurel)

yah but kids get encouraged to read captain underpants, have special captain underpants themed underpants bought for them, etc.; no one goes "oh, you watched big brother for seventeen hours? well done you are so clever"

I think that's more about how a lot of parents feel/think about their kids reading vs themselves reading, tbh -- like it's something they've been told is good for their kids but the parents themselves might not be showing any desire for improvement/education in their own lives, so how do you expect your kids to? Goes way off beyond the scope of this thread.

http://www.amazon.com/Sidelong-Glances-Pigeon-Kicker/dp/B000F9JG60/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265918986&sr=8-3

going to have to read this one again someday if I can find a copy. basically by the time I was a teenager 'catcher in the rye' was seeming a little dated and I also thought Holden complained too much, but the pigeon kicker running around in 60's nyc seemed like my kind of guy

and just found out -- there's a film version made in 1970! that's a good year. it's probably terrible but I have to see it.

http://www.jeffvandezande.com/2008/10/sidelong-glances-of-pigeon-kicker.html

this is just about the only thing on the entire internet I can find on the book

that actually looks pretty awesome.

yeah, i wanna read the pigeon kicker book! $56 on amazon!

Here's one more post I did about Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker . . . hope it helps (I went through a phase where I was obsessed with that book)

http://www.jeffvandezande.com/2008/10/sidelong-glances-of-pigeon-kicker_11.html#comments

oh man. the part where he takes the boy to the zoo. it's just a good book isn't it, you don't even have to be 13

thanks for posting

I really want to find a copy of this now ... and see the movie.

Just glad that all that blogging I did about Pigeon Kicker served a purpose. Seems like more people come to my blog looking for Pigeon Kicker than they do my novel (this is the part where you say, "You have a novel?", then I say "yes", then we banter, then I get comfortable enough to drop the name of my novel (Landscape with Fragmented Figures) "yes, yes," I say to your impatient inquiries as to whether or not it's available on amazon . . . in fact, I cleverly say, "Yes, it is . . . and for much less than $56." and round and round we go . . . until the end result: nobody actually buys my book. It's an online exercise in futility, but I like it.

the internet's all about futility, I like it too

http://i54.tinypic.com/2z3nx2q.jpg

this is the most memorable Great Illustrated Classics book I read as a kid. it starts out as a faithful retelling of Wells's work, but I guess the adapter got bored about halfway through, because the familiar Eloi/Morlock story leads into a completely new plotline in which the hero travels forward billions of years to a planet that is growing increasingly cold and desolate under the light of a dying sun. the new rulers of the earth are giant crabs that chase him across the desert and try to eat him (spoiler: they don't eat him). he then flees to a less distant future (I'm thinking the 22nd or 23th century?) where a group of techno-fascist weirdos disarm him with apathy gas and truth serum and try to steal his time machine. I was really disappointed a few years later when I read the original novel and didn't come across any crabs.

are you serious?? this is insanity

holy shit i remember reading, and being kinda freaked out by, that adaptation of the time machine. can't say i've ever read the original to compare! i wonder what else great illustrated classix fucked up for me..

when i was maybe 10 or 11 a relative got me this oversized illustrated shakespeare for my birthday, which i read and loved. i remember being ~shocked~ when i got to high school and realized that shakespeare's plays were written in verse and had all these extraneous plots

Bunnicula was my jam

http://www.terpconnect.umd.edu/~ehamm/Animorphs/animorphs1.jpg

http://bellaonbooks.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/the-thief2.jpg

http://www.survivors-mad-dog.org.uk/a-world-away/Graphics/Alas_03.jpg

weirdo Cold War-era novel about Russia nuking the US (even more weird that it takes place in Florida and the places being nuked weren't far from where I lived)

ANIMORPHS YES.

I read The Thief!!!

also this:
http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n9/n48558.jpg

holy fuck I ordered that book out of a book fair catalog

one of those dude had like the shittiest power, like feeling physical pain he inflicted on others or something