What Books Did You Enjoy Reading While a Pre-teen?

[Totenkindly]

Before I was a teen only gets me up to about 1980-1981.

- Encyclopedia Brown
- Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew
- Susan Cooper (Dark is Rising)
- Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series
- Ursula leGuin's Earthsea
- Madeleine L'Engle's wrinkle in Time
- CS Lewis' Narnia
- Tolkien's Hobbit + Lord of the Rings
- The Great Brain series
- James Blish's STTOS novelization of the episodes
- Dr Seuss
- Alvin Fernold books
- various Caldecott winners
- Mythology books
- Dinosaur books
- space/Astronomy books

Those are some of the more central things, but I had gone through the entire kid's section of my public local library by fifth grade at the latest and was reading from the adult section.

Charlotte's Web springs to mind. And Choose your own adventure types of books.

Yeah, good choices. I loved the latter, both the normal sort + the Ian Livingstone ones.

 

[Totenkindly]

It's been a long time since I've read them, but they are kind of trippy. If I remember right, they are a combination of Arthurian legend, weird science, and teen angst. I found them pretty absorbing.

I don't think there are any Arthurian things in the Wrinkle in Time series, you might be thinking Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" series there (with The Grey King, etc., and set in England).

L'Engle's Christian faith kind of plays out in the books, especially the first one, but they also blend in basic psychology/spirituality with a very NF flavor.

A Wrinkle in Time has Meg tesseracting across the universe to save her father, and her 5-year-old genius brother Charles Wallace goes along and she ends up needing to save him too. There are three old women (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which) who are far more than they seem. There are forces of light and darkness in the universe -- life vs emptiness/void -- and that's what Meg is fighting... that which steals life and individuality from people in the name of conformity and lifelessness.

A Wind in the Door is the "next step" where Meg and Calvin are being taught how to be Teachers along with a cherubim, in order to save Charles Wallace's life.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet leaps further ahead in the future, where Charles Wallace (now 15) trips through time with Gaudiour and goes Within people in order to change time back to what it should be, in order to prevent a world catastrophe. It's actually the most "normal" of the three, probably, in that different chapters are written as the character that Charles Wallace is within.

There are a few other books she wrote that are attached to the same family, but those are the main three.

I really love L'Engle as a person and writer (she was pretty profilic and wrote some journal-ly books too), she died in her late 80's probably within the last 7 years or so, I think. A Wind in the Door is an influence on a current project I'm working on.

 

[FemMecha]

- Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew
- CS Lewis' Narnia
- Tolkien's Hobbit
- space/Astronomy books

I have these in common with you.
I also read Heinlein and some other scifi

 

[Ivy]

I didn't read these as a kid myself, but I'm currently reading Jenny and the Cat Club to my son and I think I love it more than he does. <3

 

[Totenkindly]

I have these in common with you.
I also read Heinlein and some other scifi

I don't remember if I read Heinlein before I turned 13. I did read The Number of the Beast.

 

[Totenkindly]

I didn't read these as a kid myself, but I'm currently reading Jenny and the Cat Club to my son and I think I love it more than he does. <3

I think I might have enjoyed A Series of Misfortunate Events more than my kids did, although they probably got more out of Captain Underpants (which I really liked, but they were very excited about him).

 

[Ivy]

Some others: Alice in Wonderland (loved, read over and over and over- despite not really being a repeat reader otherwise)
The Phantom Tollbooth
Bridge to Terabithia
Tuck Everlasting
Sign of the Beaver
Where the Red Fern Grows (ALL THE TEARS)

I'm sure I'll think of more. Great thread!

 

[Zarathustra]

Piers Anthony was a big thing amongst me and my friends.

I really liked Jack London as well.

Some Tolkien. Some C.S. Lewis.

The mandatory Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll.

I tried 'A Wrinkle In Time', but couldn't get into it.

I actually got pretty into these stupid X-files novels.

A lot of science and encyclopedia-type books, too.

I don't remember how old I was... 12? 13? When I got into dystopic/science fiction (Time Machine, War of the Worlds, 1984).

I actually had a bit of a thing for historical fiction, come to think of it (American History stuff; don't remember names).

Oh, and Michael Crichton and other movie stuff, like Jurassic Park, The Hot Zone, 12 Monkeys, etc.

And then a bunch of crap that I tried out, but never really liked all that much: Goosebumps, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, etc.

Thanks for prompting that; that was actually kinda fun trying to wring that shit out of my brain.

 

[Ivy]

Some books I remember reading and loving, but I don't remember the titles or authors of:

one about a girl who visits her cousins who live in a coal-mining town and they solve some kind of ghost mystery at the mine
one about a brother and sister pair who spend a summer away from home, and they find some kind of abandoned town, and later find an old couple who still live there and befriend them
one about some kids who find a note in their grandparents' attic that turns out to be the beginning of some kind of scavenger hunt their grandparents set up when they were much younger, it ends with them finding a key and unlocking family memorobilia or something- clearly I'm not remembering all of the details of this one but I remember being pretty fascinated with it for some time

 

[cafe]

I don't think there are any Arthurian things in the Wrinkle in Time series, you might be thinking Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" series there (with The Grey King, etc., and set in England).

I think you're right. Do not remember reading that at all, but apparently I did.

 

[Aquarelle]

Loved the Diary of Adrian Mole! I read a lot of Babysitter's Club too, Aleda. I also loved Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown (those might've been a little earlier than preteen, can't remember for sure), and Choose Your Own Adventure books. I was also into ghost stories and mysteries/unexplained/paranormal stuff but not really other kinds of horror stories.

I loved Nancy Drew when I was a kid! I had a whole huge collection, and I still have it somewhere, thinking I'd save it for my daughter someday. Two problems with this:
1. No sign of a daughter (or son) anytime soon; and less depressingly but more pertinently,
2. I tried to reread Nancy Drew recently and found it totally irrelevant to life in the 21st century

I loved Choose Your Own Adventure too!

I also read RL Stine, The Babysitter's Club, and CS Lewis' Narnia series (well, actually, the latter were the books my mom read to us during long car rides, so technically I had them read to me. I'm too old to have read Harry Potter as a pre-teen (or teen...) but I definitely love the series!

I tried 'A Wrinkle In Time', but couldn't get into it.

Same here-- never did like it much as a kid. I reread it as an adult and liked it a bit more.

Hated Hatchet.

I used to read a lot of stuff about the Holocaust, like Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry.

I also loved Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik series

the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary

Sideways Stories from Wayside School and its sequels

and S.E. Hinton's books The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is Now. Those were some of my favorites.

 

[Fluffywolf]

Donald duck. I don't think I was aware there was other reading material besides Donal duck back then.

 

[highlander]

- When I was in 2nd to 4th grade, I read a lot of biographies of famous people like Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Buffalo Bill, The Red Baron, Eddie Rickenbacker and things like that.
- When I was 11 - 12, I got into Greek Mythology and read everything I could find on it. I never believed in it. It was just really interesting.
- The Hobbit was my favorite book when I was 12.
- I read a lot of books about historical airplanes and cars, with many pictures.
- I read a lot of Tom Swift books somewhere in there; spent close to one whole summer doing that.

 

[chickpea]

All kinds of teen girl books. The Georgia Nicholson series, gossip girl, the Alice books, I can't think of many others off the top of my head but I read all the time as a kid. I loved the outsiders too. actually everything aquarelle posted pictures of.

 

[011235813]

Read pretty much all of Roald Dahl, Gerald Durrell and James Herriot from about age 8-12. Totally wanted to be a vet because of the latter two, but also because I liked to roll around in the mud in our backyard and collect grubs and chase stray animals. Oh, I also liked Jack London a lot.

Also read a lot of British boarding school stories, which I enjoyed because they were weirdly similar to my own school life despite being so dated. Stuff like Enid Blyton and the Chalet School series. Also the William series and Jennings series, which were more geared towards boys but which I found hysterically funny. Some older American stuff as well, like Little Women, Pollyanna, What Katy Did, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

Fantasy stuff like Lewis Carroll and The Wizard of Oz series. Also loved the Tintin and Asterix comics (still do).

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was probably my favorite book growing up.

And I had a brief run in with Sweet Valley and R.L. Stine around age 11-12.

 

[Randomnity]

Everything I could get my hands on. Reader's digest condensed books, fantasy (like dragons and stuff), stephen king's everything, narnia series, black stallion series, jack london's everything, james herriot's everything, and others that are slower to come to mind. Mostly magic or animal stories. That's still mostly what I read, although I read less often now.

A bit before that I liked goosebumps, bruce coville, little house on the prairie (entire series and sequels), boxcar children, nancy drew, sweet valley high, babysitter's club, beverley cleary, roald dahl, lots of abridged classics, choose your own adventure, the madeleine l'engle series. And of course lots of individual books, but those are harder to dredge from my memory.

I read a lot growing up.

 

[Ivy]

Roald Dahl- YES!
Also somebody said Donald Duck- I LOVED the Uncle Scrooge ones. They were my faves.

 

[WALMART]

Ender's Game/Shadow. The Giver. Timeline. The Lost World. Count Zero. The Hobbit.


I read a lot of non-fiction science books, about space and shit. Stories were a far cry from what could be learned from them.

 

[011235813]

OMG, can't believe I forgot Anne of Green Gables. That used to be my most favorite series ever.

 

[Ivy]

Ender's Game/Shadow. The Giver. Timeline. The Lost World. Count Zero. The Hobbit.


I read a lot of non-fiction science books, about space and shit. Stories were a far cry from what could be learned from them.

My brother and I used to fight over who got to read the S encyclopedia.