My sons are 9 and 13 and I’d like to buy them some of the books I liked at their age. I was an absolutely voracious reader, but I can’t seem to recall much of what I read. Narnia, which they’ve had. The Dark Is Rising I got to much later in life but they’ve had that too. Neverending Story, check. Ender’s Game, check.
My husband suggested the Xanth books, so I just re-bought the first one. I remembered it being terribly sexist, so I decided to re-read it before I gave it away. Wow. It’s not the sexism I mind now, it’s the utter crap of the writing style.
We’ve ordered Have Spacesuit, Will Travel and plan to go through the rest of the Heinlein juvies. Mildly sexist but at least the writing holds. Any other suggestions?
Go get them:
The House With The Clock In Its Walls
It’s a hit with everyone I’ve read it with. I’ve read it to 1,000 7th graders over the past few years and they all adore it.
There’s two other recent threads covering the SF/Fantasy and zombie/apocalypse categories, so I’ll just list general literature.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (and sequels)
The Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif.
ETA: oh yeah, Mahaloth I remember that one too!!! Creepy!
“Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle
D’OH! I just re-read the OP:smack: Sorry HennaDancer! As penance I’ll make myself useful and link to the other threads.
and
Wrinkle in Time- good one and definitely on my list. They’ve read it. Also Earthsea.
Mahaloth- thanks! You had me at Edward Gorey illustrations. i went and bought it.
The Conan series wasn’t horrid.
Most things by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Asimov? The robot books were very good and not too involved like some of his others.
Alexander Lloyd’s Chronicles of Prydain, of course!
I also loved the Alanna books by Tamora Pierce. She’s got a bunch of others now, but those are still my favorite.
Some of the Pern books from Anne McCaffery are appropriate and interesting for kids. Some will bore them to tears.
Well, I don’t seem to recall your childhood so here are some of what I read in my youth:
Jules Verne:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
From the Earth to the Moon
Around the Moon
Around the World in Eighty Days
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
H.G. Wells:
The Time Machine
The War Of The Worlds
**Edgar Rice Burroughs: **
Barsoom series
Pellucidar series
Venus series
Robert Heinlein:
Red Planet
The Rolling Stones
Farmer in the Sky
Between Planets
Time for the Stars
Tunnel in the Sky
Starman Jones
The Star Beast
Isaac Asimov
Fantastic Voyage
Rama
Caves of Steel
Robot novels
EE Doc Smith:
Lensman series
**Larry Niven: **
various known space short-stories
Douglas Adams:
Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Clarke’s Tales from The White Hart was wicked fun when I was about your boys’ ages. I think I read Rendezvous With Rama about the same time.
I absolutely devoured and ingested Asimov’s anthologies at the time, especially all the Hugo Winners books. By definition, it’s got dozens of the very best SF short stories ever written inside.
Philip Josè Farmer’s Riverworld books were great fun, and sparked quite an interest in biographies and history for me.
Jack Chalker’s Four Lords of the Diamond series kept me interested and entertained, as did his And The Devil May Drag You Under. But for me it was his Nathan Brazil/Well World books that really fascinated me.
I have always been a voracious reader, and it was at about your oldest boy’s age that I was first getting into Ellison, Niven (& Pournelle), Bradbury, etc.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, of course.
Watership Down
I second Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles
A look through the list of Newbery Award recipients might jog your memory [it did mine—reminded me of the Dr. Doolittle books and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH], though the majority of them aren’t F/SF (and some of them may be too dated or juvenile for your 13-year-old).
Yes, I forgot to list Prydain- mostly because I just bought it (again) for myself and I wasn’t thinking of getting another copy for them
I hadn’t considered the “classics”. Jules Verne and all that. I read mostly fantasy. I would have thought that they were a little young for those, and the Asimov and stuff. Maybe I just have parent disease and have trouble aging the kids in my mind past toddler status. Sigh.
NIMH!!! Yes, definitely. They’d both love that.
Thank you all for these excellent “reminders”!
Tamora Pierce’s YA fantasies are fun. And even though they tend toward girl-power, my husband enjoyed them quite a bit. So far we’ve (hubby and I. I buy them for his Kindle and then read when he’s at work) only read some of her Tortall universe books.
The Song of the Lioness series
Trickster duet were fun and fast.
My husband really enjoyed the first book of the Beka Cooper series as did I, but those got put aside while we read the Song of Fire and Ice series.
Anything by Diana Wynne Jones, currently my second favorite author. Hard to find, though. Anything Jane Yolen.
I’ll have to look into Tamora Pierce.
Does The Phantom Tollbooth count?
I have prepared a list of children’s fantasy series for my grandnephew, who just finished the Harry Potter books, so that he could know what to read next:
Lewis Carroll – The Alice books
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
L. M. Boston – The Green Knowe series
The Children of Green Knowe
The Treasure of Green Knowe
The River at Green Knowe
A Stranger at Green Knowe
An Enemy at Green Knowe
The Stones of Green Knowe
Lloyd Alexander – The Chronicles of Prydain
The Book of Three
The Black Cauldron
The Castle of Llyr
Taran Wanderer
The High King
The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain
C. S. Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle
John Bellairs and Brad Strickland – The Lewis Barnavelt series
The House with a Clock in Its Walls
The Figure in the Shadows
The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring
The Ghost in the Mirror
The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder
The Doom of the Haunted Opera
The Specter from the Magician’s Museum
The Beast under the Wizard’s Bridge
The Tower at the End of the World
The Whistle, the Grave, and the Ghost
The House Where Nobody Lived
The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer
Madeleine L’Engle – The Time Quartet
A Wrinkle in Time
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Many Waters
L. Frank Baum – The Oz books
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Marvelous Land of Oz
Ozma of Oz
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
The Road to Oz
The Emerald City of Oz
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Tik-Tok of Oz
The Scarecrow of Oz
Rinkitink in Oz
The Lost Princess of Oz
The Tin Woodman of Oz
The Magic of Oz
Glinda of Oz
Edith Nesbit – Psammead series
Five Children and It
The Phoenix and the Carpet
The Story of the Amulet
Edith Nesbit – House of Arden series
The House of Arden
Harding’s Luck
Ursula K. Le Guin – The Earthsea books
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
Tehanu
Tales from Earthsea
The Other Wind
Daniel Pinkwater – The Snarkout Boys books
The Snarkout Boys and the Avacado of Death
The Snarkout Boys and the Baconsburg Horror
Daniel Pinkwater – The Ancient Epic series
The Neddiad
The Iggysey
The Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl
Susan Cooper – The Dark Is Rising series
Over Sea, Under Stone
The Dark Is Rising
Greenwitch
The Grey King
Silver on the Tree
Diane Duane – The Young Wizard books
So You Want to Be a Wizard
Deep Wizardry
High Wizardry
A Wizard Abroad
The Wizard’s Dilemma
A Wizard Alone
Wizard’s Holiday
Wizards at War
A Wizard of Mars
Roald Dahl – The Charlie books
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Joan Aiken – The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series
The Whispering Mountain
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Black Hearts in Battersea
Nightbirds on Nantucket
The Stolen Lake
Dangerous Games
The Cuckoo Tree
Dido and Pa
Is Underground
Cold Shoulder Road
Midwinter Nightingale
The Witch of Clatteringshaws
Diane Wynne Jones – Chronicles of Chrestomanci
Charmed Life
The Magicians of Caprona
Witch Week
The Lives of Christopher Chant
Mixed Magics
Conrad’s Fate
The Pinhoe Egg
Diana Wynne Jones – The Castle series
Howl’s Moving Castle
Castle in the Air
House of Many Ways
Eoin Colfer – The Artemis Fowl series
Artemis Fowl
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code
Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony
Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox
Artemis Fowl: The Atlantic Complex
Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian
Jonathan Stroud – The Bartimaeus series
The Amulet of Samarkand
The Golem’s Eye
Ptolemy’s Gate
The Ring of Solomon
Alan Garner – The Colin and Susan books
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
The Moon of Gomrath
George MacDonald – The Princess Irene books
The Princess and the Goblin
The Princess and Curdie
Terry Pratchett – The Tiffany Aching books
The Wee Free Men
A Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith
I Shall Wear Midnight
Mary Norton – The Borrowers series
The Borrowers
The Borrowers Afield
The Borrowers Afloat
The Borrowers Aloft
The Borrowers Avenged
Carol Kendall – The Minnipin books
The Gammage Cup
The Whisper of Glocken
Beatrix Potter – The 23 Tales
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
The Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle
The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan
The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher
The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit
The Story of Miss Moppet
The Tale of Tom Kitten
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck
The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or, The Roly-Poly Pudding
The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
The Tale of Ginger and Pickles
The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse
The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes
The Tale of Mr. Tod
The Tale of Pigling Bland
Appley-Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes
The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse
Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes
The Tale of Llittle Pig Robinson
The early teen years are the proper time to read the Pern series and David Eddings, if you must. I enjoyed both back then.
By the time he finishes that list, the kid should be eligible for social security.
I’ll add the Doc Savage series, and maybe The Destroyer series–probably not strictly speaking sf/fantasy, but still fun.
That’s why I told him not to worry if it takes him a long time to read them. I haven’t even read them all yet.
I second/third/fourth Asimov. Loved him, still do. Burrough’s Tarzan books, especially the early ones, also were great fantasy stories.