Childhood nostalgia poll

[rachelmanija]

Please reminisce, fondly or not, about any of these, or other books read in childhood, especially if they seem to have, deservedly or undeservedly, vanished from the shelves. I'd love to hear about non-US, non-British books, too.

[Poll #1720139]

Comments

[algeh]

I can't believe no one's mentioned John Christopher yet! I guess he wrote trilogies rather than endless series, but those were some of the first SF books I read.

I also remember reading a bunch of YA serials in elementary school that haven't been mentioned yet: Sleepover Friends, Pen Pals, and Animal Inn all come to mind as things that my group of friends and I read together.

I also remember liking a mystery series called TACK that was similar to Encyclopedia Brown but about a group of kids instead of just one.

[rosefox]

I was completely shocked to see neither Eager nor Nesbit on that list. Or Baum!

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I just ordered the first one on Amazon (they're mostly out of print, but seem fairly available used) so that I can refresh my memory!

[rosefox]

+1 to all of these except the Boxcar Children and Duane (whom I discovered as an adult).

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Oh! Yes! Cam Jansen and Encyclopedia Brown, and Wayside Stories.

[rosefox]

If we're getting into adolescence, I want to put in a shout-out to everyone else who got their first confused ideas about sex from Jean Auel's books.

[rosefox]

OZ OZ OZ

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I read an embarrassing number of Babysitters Club books, embarrassingly late. They were completely mindless, totally popcorn, and I could read one in something like half an hour, and sometimes what I wanted actually was to not have to think very much for half an hour.

My memorable-for-the-title-not-the-book memory is "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks," which was about... a plant that ate dirty socks, truth in advertising. (Actually, two. But one of them, IIRC, ate clean socks.) The plants had adventures, including things like the time where they ate a singing Christmas sock and got sick from the battery.

In the way of goofy early-90s middle-grade books, it had sequels, including, if I remember correctly, "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Up In Space," which I may have read, and "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Gets a Girlfriend," which I did not.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

McGurk Mysteries! I am so glad Rachel posted this, simply because I know what they're called now.

I did always like the way the mysteries solved in the McGurk books were mostly, well, genuinely child-scale mysteries--without seeming boring or stupid.

[matt_doyle]

All of the above!

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I inhaled the Marguerite Henry horse books. Well, horse books in general, but hers were at the top of the heap.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I kept my hardback of Mara but stupidly lent The Golden Goblet to someone who never returned it so I too had to hold out for the reprint in paperback.

I was kerblonxed when I found out, eighteen months ago, that Elizabeth Peters was Barbara Mertz, whom I also reread obsessively Back Then. Always wondered what had happened to her.

(I'd never read Elizabeth Peters before that. She annoyed me for years because she sat next to Ellis Peters on the crime shelf, and every time I thought 'Hey great a new Ellis Peters!' no-it-wasn't. OTOH her prejudice against Ramses II seems to have waned just a teensy bit in the intervening years.)

'Pharaoh' is about Hatshepsut and I vaguely recall it, across a half century, as plotty and long and not as congenial to my 11 year old tastes as Mara. Can still remember a line from the preface: 'I don't say 'it happened like this', or 'it might have happened like this', but 'what if it had happened like this?' Otehrwise all I recall is naive young Thutmose coming back from a military expedition to find his aunt sitting on the throne and himself suddenly stripped of all power, which appealed to the melodrama lover in me.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The Golden Goblet (http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Goblet-Newbery-Library-Puffin/dp/0140303359) is set in Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep III, a few hundred years after Mara. Mara has romance; TGG doesn't. ^_^ Is still a fun book.

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

The main series missing from your list for me are the Norah of Billabong series and the Silver Brumby books (though there is a distinct lack of Alcott, now I think of it, and what about the Green Knowe books and the Dark is Rising sequence?).

Enid Blyton was a forbidden author in our house, but my grandparents had the Faraway Tree, which I loved, and later I stayed at a friend's house for a holiday and she had all the Malory books, or perhaps all the St Clare ones, I can't remember. And in the school series, did you ever read Antonia Forest's Marlow books?

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Kind of sort of? It isn't directly related to Mara in plot or characters; The Golden Goblet is set in a later era, the reign of Amenhotep III, and it reads somewhat younger to me -- the boy protagonist is pre-adolescent and there's no romantic subplot like in Mara. It's still quite enjoyable if you like the historical setting and McGraw's writing, but I was never quite as obsessed with it as I was with Mara. Luckily it's still in print, so you can actually find new or used copies at a decent price.

[cinaed.livejournal.com]

Stumbled on this through friendsfriends!

Oh man, other people have read Cherry Ames? This pleases me beyond belief-- instead of reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys series, I read the Cherry Ames series (my mom grew up in the 50s and still has all but six or so of the books).

I love(d) the Cherry Ames books-- female friendships! Cherry being able to date two guys (at the same time, if I remember right) without angst! awesome mysteries! Plus, Cherry Ames had a twin brother, and I, as a fraternal twin myself, loved that. See also: the Alanna series.

Has anyone read M.T. Anderson's Pals in Peril Tales series? They're modern, but definitely a loving spoof on childhood mystery/adventure stories-- there's Lily, the ordinary girl whose father happens to be working for villains trying to take over the world and who has two extraordinary friends; Katie Mulligan, heroine of the Horror Hollow series wherein she solves supernatural mysteries; and Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, a boy scientist whose books went out of date about fifty years ago and builds very bulky, awkward machines and says things like "my good fellow!" Together, they fight the occasional whale or spy disguised as furniture, and endure the flame-pits of Delaware.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspected that you had made up the concept of "The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks" out of whole cloth, but no, there it is on Amazon. With a title like that, it really ought to have been written by Daniel Pinkwater...

[sleary.livejournal.com]

Marguerite Henry, Narnia, most of Madeleine L'Engle, most of L.M. Montgomery, Caroline Cooney's Dance books (actually, half the stuff on that page), Bunnicula, Satin Slippers, and this horse series that I did not remember any details about whatsoever, but hooray for the people at GoodReads and a Google search on "horse series gingham cover."

If there was a horse in it and it was published in the '80s, there's a good chance I read it. I discovered SF a few years later.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Me four. The middle books were the best. I loved Ella's romance with Jules, and I was so worried when Lena got polio.

My grandmother lived in the Lower East Side when she was a small child (though slightly later than the time span of the All-Of-A-Kind books). I really felt like those books connected me to her childhood somehow.

[sleary.livejournal.com]

Holy cats, how could I have forgotten Lurlene McDaniel?! Aside from being morbid, those books imparted useful knowledge -- I pretty much knew what was going on with my grandfather when he was diagnosed with leukemia when I was seven or so. Shocked the hell out of my mother, who had no idea what I'd been reading.

[pameladean]

Sue Barton, Judy Bolton, and Rick Brant.

Sue Barton, like Cherry Ames, was a nurse, and the first book starts with her training. These books were significantly less formulaic than Cherry Ames and had what seemed to me much more realistic banter and better humor. Her life actually progresses -- she gets married, has kids who grow older, but she still works as a nurse.

Judy Bolton is an amateur detective who eventually marries an FBI agent. These are about as formulaic as the Cherry Ames books, but, again, things progress, people get older. Cherry got a reset after a while, really.

Rick Brant is the son of a scientist, and with his best friend, a former Marine whom he picks up hitchhiking, I think, he solves scientific or pseudo-scientific mysteries. These are fairly formulaic but I really liked the science and science-fictional aspects of the series; there are a number of plots that involve technology that didn't actually exist when the books were written. The main irritant was that Rick has a younger sister named Barbie. She is inconsistently characterized, being used to ask naive questions when necessary but being perfectly competent and brave when that is necessary. And yet she is always put aside from the action, however capable she has been in her little supporting role.

P.

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

The only series I read that no one else has mentioned is the Sunfire romance (http://www.reocities.com/brynahilde/sunfire/) series of ridiculously addictive historical teen romances. Each book had a beautiful girl on the cover, with pictures of the two guys she would have to choose between next to her. You could almost always tell which guy she would end up with because it would be the one she was standing with in those little pictures. I loved historical fiction (Anne Shirley and Laura Ingalls being two of my favorites), so these were perfect for a preteen, absurd as they were. I remember especially being into Laura (http://www.reocities.com/brynahilde/sunfire/laura.html), just for the cover -- look at that adorable sailor suit and her cute boyfriends!

(I didn't want to duplicate everyone else's responses, but this is reminding me that I really do need to do a self-appointed project and sit down to write out my favorite books age 5-12 and what I liked most about them, since I'm considering writing some children's fiction and I want to remember what made a book great for me at that age.)

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

There....there are more than one Doll book? (gapes in happy shock)

I'd forgotten about A Dolls House but I know I have it around here somewhere. I remember that wicked Marchpane, and sweet little Apple...oh, that was a wonderful book. I didn't know it was a series. I will have to find those immediately.

Since we're talking about books that were extremely old when I was quite young, anyone remember "The Surprise of Their Lives?" (by Hazel Hutchins Wilson, per Amazon) There were a brother and sister whose little sister got scarlet fever, and they couldn't go home, and they had to stay at the nasty overly strict elderly neighbor's house, and somehow they accidentally stowed away on a cruise ship...

Oh, and what about Jane's Father (by Dorothy Keely Aldis, per Amazon)? Jane's father was very silly--I think they wound up putting his head in a birdcage at one point. And calomel was the cure-all, which confused me because I'd never heard of it. I thought it must be a precursor to St. Joseph's Baby Aspirin.

I liked Carolyn Haywood's Betsy books too, though it was odd because they started out way before my time and suddenly there was a time warp and they became quite contemporary to my mid-70s childhood.

This happened with Beverly Cleary too--Henry Huggins was a 50s kid with a coonskin cap watching Davy Crockitt and Ramona was a 3-year-old enamored with a Howdy Doody analog. And then when Ramona starts kindergarten she's a 70s kid, and then her father loses his job in the 70s recession and her mother goes back to work around the time my mother does the same...it was sort of confusing.

[sophinisba]

Me too with the Boxcar Children.

[roadrunnertwice]

Oh man, definitely.