Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant.
Also the two sequels.
Pratchett’s juvenile books are generally excellent. The Bromeliad Trilogy, the Johnny Maxwell trilogy (particularly Johny and the Dead) and the Tiffany Aching and other juvenile Discworld books are all great. The Amazing Maurice is as good as they come. I’m looking forward to the new one with Vimes and young Sam. (His son, not his younger self from Nightwatch)
Mandy by Julie Andrews-Edwards and A Dark Traveling by Roger Zelanzy
Can I get a cite for that? From everything I’ve heard, Grimm’s (Grimms’?) original stories were quite grisly and not for the little 'uns.
I remember reading this when I was ten? eleven? and loving it! Here’s the Amazon page, but from the used prices it looks as if it’s out-of-print.
Oh. My. God. I’d completely forgotten about *Interstellar Pig[/]! I LOVED that book! Thank you for reminding me of it. I think my kids would love it.
William Sleator, btw.
:eek:
Is that the one about the weird statuette thingy? (Gah, I can barely remember!)
That’s definitely one to search down when I get my stuff out of storage again.
That’s the one. Everyone is searching for the Pig. And they’re (supposedly) teenagers. They think it’s in the house the kid next door is spending the summer in with his family.
Oh, man, I loved Interstellar Pig! I read it in Finnish at the age of 12 and had some very interesting dreams for the next few weeks. I also agree completely with the Dark Is Rising series; those were some gooood books. And Diana Wynne Jones: the one about the boy whose sister seemed to have magical skills and they were sent to live with the magician…Chrestomanci? googles Ah. Charmed Life.
Grisly they were. Also recited to children (the Grimm’s collected oral traditions). People had a different understanding of what children needed, at the time.
The Star Wars trilogy (yeah, not a book, sue me)
Diana Wynne Jones is often overlooked, and she’s wonderful.
I don’t get the affection for the Cooper series, though. I tried to read them a few years ago and was really unimpressed. It seems some series can be read again as an adult, but not read for the first time as an adult. I wonder if Cooper’s books tend to be that way.
Could be. I haven’t read them for a while, so maybe it’s just the memories talking. I do recall learning the poem about the rings out by heart, though. (Such a nerd.:D)
Oh, oh! One I forgot! Walter Wangerin, Jr.s The Book Of The Dun Cow. I recall that being an awesome read. It’s been a while, though. I may need to steal it from my parent’s bookshelves again and see if it still holds up.
Okay, it just now struck me that The Book Of The Dun Cow might not be considered a kids’ book; it’s more along the lines of Animal Farm. I read it at 11 or so, so that’s why it popped into my head as a kids’ book. Not to say that kids couldn’t read it and get the deeper allegorical stuff; just that, now that I think about it, I wouldn’t really categorize it as a children’s book.
I’ll stop rambling now.
I’ve always liked John Christopher’s post-apocalyptic children’s books - The Tripods, The Guardians, Empty World, The Prince in Waiting
I had never heard of that one, but I just read the excerpt and it’s great.
Dismissing Harry Potter as ‘just a kid’s book’ is ridiculous.
Dismissing it as a fairly average kid’s book is fair enough.
I disagree that it’s average. There are books that are better (though agreeing on which those are might be difficult) but there are thousands of books that are worse–books that were written as disposable entertainment.
Has anyone mentioned The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupéry? ( I think I may have butchered the name)
And perhaps not little kids, but at least “young adult” book, Sophie’s World by Jonstein Gaardner.
It doesn’t hold a candle to such things as The Hobbit, Huck Finn or Dark Materials.
Ok, HP is better than a lot of other things, but it just isn’t that good.
:smack: OK, it’s The Velvet Room, and both are by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Both are wonderful books.