(no subject)

[aliseadae]

I'd forgotten how much I like E.L. Konigsburg. My favorites of hers are The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place and From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. What are some other excellent authors that I might be likely to forget as I normally think about YA or adult SF books? What are some of your favorite children's books? Other particular favorites of mine are Joan Aiken's Dido Twite books, John Bellairs' books, Roald Dahl, Diana Wynne Jones, Phillip Pullman's Sally Lockhart books, Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, Madeleine L'Engle's books, The Phantom Tollbooth, Zilpha Keatly Snyder and many many others.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I love Lloyd Alexander's Vesper Holly books (although my favorites of his are what I would call YA--the Westmark trilogy--even though I first read it when I was 8) and Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons books.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

Patricia C. Wrede's Dealing With Dragons, and some of the other stories in that setting are still some of my favourites. There's one that I remember some plot points (sense of urgency, a fairy ring of the mushroom variety) and mental images (a ring or thimble worn on a toe that allowed a character to dance on a moonbeam) from but not things like a title or author that would be useful for finding out which book it was. It may have had the word 'midsummer' in the title. I think it had a tree on the cover. Douglas Hill's Colsec and Last Legionnaire books were nice at the time, though I don't know how they would hold up to me now. I don't remember ever reading his general audience stories, but I may simply have not made the connection. Monica Hughes sticks in my mind, though again, I haven't looked at her work for some time. Completely non-genre, but also well loved was Scott Young's Scrubs on Skates trilogy. I don't know that I would agree with some of the statements of the reviewer about how little interest the books would have for people whose stance towards hockey lay anywhere below 'enthusiastic', but then, I read them at around 7 years old, so it's possible that I was less demanding of my reading. From what I remember though, Boy on Defence was my favourite of the three. Right, that brings me of course to the classic The Hockey Sweater. I'm sure that there are lots of stories that I really liked from childhood that I can no longer remember. A good many of them came from large themed story collections my father found, many with adapted myth slants.

A number of your favourites are also mine (Roald Dahl, Madeleine L'Engle, Susan Cooper). Some I haven't read and shall perhaps look into at some point.

[vcmw]

Have you taken a look at L. A. Meyer's Bloody Jack series? They may be my favorite YA ongoing series currently (but our library has them in Juvenile - they're kind of in between).

I'm not sure that the various Wizard of Oz books are everyone's cup of tea, but I loved them madly as a kid. The first 14 - the ones written by folks other than L. Frank Baum did not please me.

Mary Poppins? As a kid I was obsessed with the Doctor Dolittle books but they haven't held their fascination for me into adulthood.

Gurk, my brain isn't working this morning at all. I can only think of classics.