# What Young Adult literature did you/do you love? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [April 6, 2023, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237 "2023-04-06T06:32:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/61 "2023-04-06T19:16:48Z")
I’m fond of **The Weirdstone of Brisingamen** , an early YA novel by Alan Garner. I’m American, but from what I’ve read, Garner became successful in England writing fiction that incorporates British folk lore. One of my favorite books from the days of reading to my daughter is **Holes** by Louis Sachar. It won the Newberry and was made into a movie featuring Sigourney Weaver (as a baddie). The film is decent, but of course the book is better. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/62 "2023-04-06T19:40:26Z")
> [@chela](#): > > I have it in the zebra stripes hardcover, once owned by a great great uncle. I gave my copy to my daughter when she was 11 and she still has it. Hopefully her grandchildren will follow suit. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/63 "2023-04-06T19:43:49Z")
_[The Wind in the Willows.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_in_the_Willows)_ ---
**Author:** ![Galactus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galactus/32/3581_2.png) [@Galactus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Galactus)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/64 "2023-04-06T20:24:18Z")
Are the books by Neil Gaiman YA? Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Stardust. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/65 "2023-04-06T20:25:31Z")
> [@Lancia](#): > > For very low level learners I like to use anything by Jerry Spinelli (_Maniac Magee_ being a perennial favorite but _The Library Card_ and _Love, Stargirl_ are also great). Laurel Croza is a Canadian First Nations author that is virtually unknown but her collection of short stories, _The Whirlpool,_ is woth inclusion in any school library. I have lesson plans based on several stories from that collection. Both Spinelli and Croza write stories about kids but do not “dumb it down” like so many YA authors (coughcoughRLStinecough). I also recommended Stargirl, but will go one step further. Get the audiobook that is read by John Ritter. He did a terrific job and it takes a great book and, I think, makes it really come to life. > [@Lancia](#): > > Gary Paulsen is also a favorite. I think everyone knows _Hatchet_ but Paulson was a prodigious writer and _Woodsong_ (a biography chronicling his participation in the Iditarod) and _The Rifle_ are arguably better than _Hatchet._ His book Winterdance is great, but is not for kids. It’s the adults version of Woodsong and was the best book I read in whatever-year-I-read-it. I loved it. Have not read his re-write for kids, which is what Woodsong was. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/66 "2023-04-06T20:33:29Z")
When my kids were little, they’d come home from their school’s Scholastic Book Fairs with all sorts of good stuff. And often have me read it to them at bedtime. Well, we all got hooked on the **Animorphs** books. I loved them: there was a lot of animal facts (the kids could “acquire” the DNA by touching an animal and changing. When the kids became dolphins, all they wanted to do was play, becoming ants was scary because they lost their individuality. And when Jake became a golden retriever, it was almost impossible to focus on anything\*…) \*_“Okay, I’m com… ohmigosh, a squirrel walked across this sidewalk yesterday. This is THE MOST EXCITING thing ever! And there’s a woman with a stroller. That’s exciting… okay, I know we have to go. But look! A boy walking a dog! That’s THE MOST EXCITING thing ever!” etc._ And there was serious science-based sci-fi. Some of it a bit dark, but my kids thought it was cool that the evil alien species would spread themselves out over someone’s brain and take over. Anyhow, by the time the kids outgrew the series ‘round about Book #30, it had been wrapped up at #52. Of course, I had to find out what happened next, so I finished them (much to the kids’ amusement). They were short books, it was easy. It was a well-written, satisfying ending, and I often reread the last two books for fun. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/67 "2023-04-06T20:43:17Z")
> [@Galactus](#): > > Are the books by Neil Gaiman YA? Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Stardust. I think _Coraline_ is children’s, _The Graveyard Book_ is YA, and _Stardust_ is standard adult. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/68 "2023-04-06T20:45:31Z")
I responded earlier with books I remembered reading as a kid, but for newer stuff, you can’t go wrong with any YA by [T. Kingfisher](https://www.amazon.com/stores/T-Kingfisher/author/B00LBKVU3E?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true). (Her adult books are great also). A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking is an example; I’ve heard good things about Swordheart as well. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/69 "2023-04-06T20:56:50Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Don’t know if it was that one but it was fascinating. It included stories about training big cats May have read something by Clyde Beatty. He was the Lion Tamer. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/70 "2023-04-06T20:58:12Z")
There’s no way I’ll remember my long list of favorites, but putting aside series (like _The Hardy Boys_ or _The Three Investigators_ or _The Great Brain_ or the Susan Cooper books), here are ones I can recall with love, off the top of my head: - _The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)_ - _From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler_ - _The Active Enzyme Lemon-Freshened Junior High School Witch_ - _The Phantom Tollbooth_ - _Harriet the Spy_ I’m pretty sure more will occur to me the moment I hit _Reply_, but it’s a start. > [@CairoCarol](#): > > The books available when I was that age were far different. My influential favorites involved settings I could relate to - _The Chocolate Wars_ (still one of my all-time favorite books, and the sequel is almost as good) I’d never heard of this growing up, but our book club facilitator for many years was his daughter, so I ended up reading it and liking it a lot. I don’t think I got to the sequel, though. > [@Mahaloth](#): > > James Joyce sucks. I read his short stories, which I could actually understand, and I still didn’t find him to be great. Overrated. Joyce is terrific. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/71 "2023-04-06T20:59:15Z")
There was a book I read in high school called _ **When the Legends Die** _. It made a huge impression on me. A movie based on the book came out a year or so later, but it it was nowhere near as good. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/72 "2023-04-06T21:02:01Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > > [@TriPolar](#): > > > > Don’t know if it was that one but it was fascinating. It included stories about training big cats > > May have read something by Clyde Beatty. He was the Lion Tamer. I did read a book by him as well so I surely confused them. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/73 "2023-04-06T21:24:43Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I think _Coraline_ is children’s, _The Graveyard Book_ is YA, and _Stardust_ is standard adult. Gaiman kind of sucks, even though he is a great guy and I like a couple things from him. Except for Sandman and Good Omens, I have not been a fan. Graveyard Book was way overrated, for example. Ocean at the End of the Lane was a rare book I almost quit on. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/74 "2023-04-06T22:04:41Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > There weren’t that many YA titles when I was a YA, at least not that I found, but one of them still stands out as the most important book any YA should read, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I mentioned reading at bedtime to my kids. We read everything, but heavy on adventure (Journey to the Center of the Earth, Treasure Island). But the most exciting one was a surprise to me: Tom Sawyer. It was the scenes of Tom and Becky lost in the caves, with Injun Joe stalking them. Twain really got across what being lost in utter darkness would be like, with deceptive echoes when you’re separated from your partner. . (Feel free to refer to First Nation Indigenous Native American Joseph if you prefer… but I was too scared at that point to care.) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/75 "2023-04-07T06:57:51Z")
I don’t think the distinction between children’s, young adult’s, and adult’s literature is very clear, and I don’t think it’s very useful. The interesting thing for me is that I didn’t read much young adult’s literature (either fiction or nonfiction) after about the time I was nine years old. I started to read some adult’s books (in terms of how difficult the material was, not in terms of it being too concerned with shocking subjects) at that time and apparently decided that I didn’t need to read anything less difficult anymore. Because of that I read a lot of adult nonfiction after that point. I didn’t get back to reading anything aimed at children or young adults until much later when I began giving such books (usually obtained quite cheaply) to my nephews and nieces and later grandnephews and grandnieces for Christmas presents. One thing I have now is a list of 38 “children’s fantasy series”. Not only do I give the list itself to them, but I give a few of the books to them each year. I started compiling this list because I was annoyed that people talked about the Harry Potter books as if it was clearly the best such books. I don’t think so. It’s not bad, but it’s somewhere around the middle of this list as far as my preferences go. Many of the series on this list have already been mentioned. One that hasn’t is what I call the A books by David Levithan (although neither Levithan nor the publisher has given a name to the series). This series consists of _Every Day_, _Another Day_, and _Someday_, so far at least. The series is about a character called A. I recommend reading _Every Day_ for everybody. Another author whose books I’d like to recommend is Michael Morpurgo. He’s much better known in the U.K. than in the U.S. (Although, strangely, there’s a movie adopted from his book _War Horse_ which was directed by Steven Spielberg.) I heard about his books first during a visit to a place called the V&A Museum of Childhood (now about to re-open as the Young V&A Museum) in London. I like one of his books I bought there, so I bought very cheaply a bunch of his books after that. ---
**Author:** ![El\_DeLuxo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_deluxo/32/9043_2.png) [@El\_DeLuxo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_DeLuxo)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/76 "2023-04-07T08:51:22Z")
I liked Robert Cormier’s grim little epics other than the _Chocolate War_ novels, and still do. _After The First Death, Fade, We All Fall Down_ and _Tenderness_ are fast, hard-hitting reads I’ve enjoyed going back to as a grown person. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/77 "2023-04-07T11:59:40Z")
I read a lot of the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, Jr. In elementary school and my grandmother paid for a subscription to Landmark Books and All About books. YA did not exist as a marketing category and by 6th grade I was reading Groff Conklin’s SF anthologies. By 7th grade I thought Isaac Asimov was my favorite author (I never read any of his Lucky Starr books, though). I was a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut in junior high; _Cat’s Cradle_ blew me away. Robert Sheckley was also a favorite. Read Heinlein, starting with _Stranger in a Strange Land_ but didn’t get to his YA stuff until after college. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/78 "2023-04-07T12:23:02Z")
This is approximately what happened to me too. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/79 "2023-04-07T14:20:41Z")
Henry Reed, INC. All the Archie Comics (which Mom used to teach me to read). ---
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237/80 "2023-04-07T14:54:11Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > > [@Mahaloth](#): > > > > Is Piers Anthony some kind of weirdo? > > …Yes? > > I read and enjoyed a fair amount of Piers Anthony when I was significantly younger, and didn’t really pick up on the skeeviness. But now… Hoo boy, I avidly read Piers Anthony when I was young. Particularly enjoyed the _Apprentice Adept_ and _Incarnations_ series (although, typical of his work, they got significantly worse as the series went on). But looking back on it, his work was always problematic and grew truly disturbing as the years went on. He’s apparently still churning out the _Xanth_ novels, although no publisher will touch him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-young-adult-literature-did-you-do-you-love/982237.md?page=5)