[ SECRET POST #2841 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2841 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 039 secrets from Secret Submission Post #406.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Based on #9

[kaijinscendre]

What are some books and books series of your childhood?

Does anyone remember The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks? I only read the first and second ones but I remember them being hilarious.

Or how about the Howliday Inn/Bunnicula series? I mean, mystery/suspense/horror novels with ANIMALS? That was just amazing. I really need to buy those books to reread.

Perhaps the biggest series I read was The Animorphs. I owned all the books at one point. It was such a brutal young adult series. Hunger Games ain't got nothing on the violence in The Animorphs.

What are some of yalls?

Re: Based on #9

[philstar22]

My childhood mostly involved the Wizard of Oz books (which is why I hate the adaptions), Anne of Green Gables series, and the Star Wars expanded universe.

Re: Based on #9

[shortysc22]

!!!!! I hate the adaptations so much too! I loved the Wizard of Oz series and as a high school graduation present, my mom bought this beautiful gilded book set that included all of Baum's books bound into three books.

And yes, I read Star Wars EU, but that was more high school/college than childhood. The Wizard of Oz....I have so many adaptations of the original book, such as children's picture books. Did you know about the Marvel comic series? I was so disappointed when I realized they weren't going to finish the series.

Re: Based on #9

[cushlamochree]

The Bunnicula series was great! I am pretty sure I nearly died laughing at those books.

I mentioned John Bellairs in my response to that secret & those books were really huge for me. They just had such great atmosphere - intensely spooky and just full of this sense of age. Also books like Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy (I never much cared for the Prydain stuff, but the Westmark books were great). The Westing Game. The Dark Is Rising! I mean, The Dark Is Rising books were absolutely fantastic.

Re: Based on #9

[kaleidoscope]

The Babysitters Clubs, Secret Valley Twins, Ramona Quimby…

Oh the memories! I don't have the books anymore, I wonder what happened to them.

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

When I was a kid, maybe 13-15, LJ Smith was my jam. It was the Nightworld series (though there were a bunch of characters I flat out HATED in those books).

11-13, it was Christopher Pike. I still remember that one book where the girl was killed in a play. I liked that one guy in it with the "double jointed hips." LOL But I got really sick of the male gaze going down in those books.

7-10, Babysitters' Club, yo. I had such a hate on for Dawn but I really liked Claudia.

Re: Based on #9

[morieris]

I keep meaning to read Animorphs one day - one of my online friends loves it to death - but with 54 books...but what am I saying, Redwall has 21 (or is it 22) books, All of the Percy Jackson universes span to about thirteen, Harry Potter - yeah.

Anyways, besides the above listed, The Mistmantle Chronicles, lots of others in my closet right now...

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

I read a lot of the Bingo Brown books. Also the 80s-90s Hardy Boys, a bunch of Star Wars EU, Judy Blume's Fudge series, and I didn't realize there was more than one book in the H.O.W.L. High universe until I spied a sequel at the used bookstore.

Re: Based on #9

[silvereriena]

I loved Animorphs, even though I was somewhat disturbed by some of the angstier themes. Nothing else I read at that point was as heavy. And then of course, the Harry Potter books. I swore I would never read them because I thought it sucked without knowing anything about it, but then a friend got me Chamber of Secrets for my 10th birthday, so I decided I had to read it out of obligation. I loved it so much I bought the first book so I could read that as well and the rest is history.

Re: Based on #9

[ginainthekingsroad]

*The big one is anything Diana Wynne Jones, especially the Chrestomanci books and the Dalemark Quartet (which I just reread this year and I was spotting all the things that unknowingly were a direct influence on my writing).

*Edgar Eager and E. Nesbitt books.

*Rumer Godden's doll books- The Doll's House, and Miss Happiness & Miss Flower/Little Plum.

*The Betsy-Tacy books; these were favorites of my mom's (and possibly her mom?), so I'm one of the few people these days who read the books where the girls grow up and travel and get married. I think most people now stop at Betsy & Tacy Go Downtown.

*Various LM Montgomery stuff, and not just AoGG and Emily. Like, A Tangled Web and The Blue Castle. And like with Betsy-Tacy, we read the later Anne books. I swear, we did read things that were published after 1960 too...

*Brian Froud's Faeries book!

*Okay, this is the odd one out in my list, but I loved the Peanut Butter and Jelly series. I think I had 1-7. The Halloween story was the best one; actually, that was also true for the Gymnasts Club series.

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

I remember reading the Super Fudge series, Boxcar Children, Fear Street, Babysitter's Club, Encyclopedia Brown, and Cam Jansen (?).

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

OH MY GOD. I forgot about those books entirely but I LOVED them. I read the whole series.

I also read the entire Oz series (actually, just about everything L. Frank Baum ever wrote) and Nancy Drew.

The Unicorns of Balinor! Bruce Coville's books. Ohhhh and Patricia C. Wrede's books!

Gosh, I had so many favorites. Encyclopedia Brown!! ... I'm having a serious moment of nostalgia.

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

Most of the books of my childhood were based on what the local library had, so there's possibly some odd choices here or there.

The Luvender trilogy by June Considine. I have no idea if anyone remembers these or if they were ever widely known at all, but I adored them. They were creepy as hell. They had soul-stealing porcelaine dolls, a sorceror trying to steal the souls of children to fuel his immortality, a weird red bird that took evil souls down a dark river, a mudslide that had innundated the town years ago, a ghost girl linked to an iron gate who sacrificed herself, and a whole bunch of other weird, horrifying and awesome things.

The Famous Five, the Secret Seven, the Secret series, and more or less every book Enid Blyton ever wrote. I was big on mysteries as a kid, and remember being distinctly pleased when I figured out a plot twist ahead of the story once or twice.

"A Wild Ghost Chase" by D.J. Enright. I liked Scooby Doo as a kid, and basically read anything that looked like it might give me something similar. I remember this one mostly for the way he used the Undine story.

Edward Lear's "Nonsense Songs and Stories". I think. One of his nonsense books, anyway. Our other main source of books besides the library was my granddad, who tended towards mythology, poetry and Irish stories. Which, speaking of ...

"The Hounds of the Morrigan" by Pat O'Shea. Memorable to me primarily for making me honestly fear for the lives of the protagonists at various points, giving me a mild fear of being run down by dogs, and for having the three aspects of the Morrigan as cool, evil old biker ladies which multicoloured hair.

The Giltspur series by Cormac Mac Raois. A pair of farmer's kids in Wicklow find that the Bealtaine feast has caused their mouldy scarecrow to be possessed by Glasan, a fae prince, and they get rapidly dragged into mythological battles. I can't remember which book it was in, but the other scarecrow, the evil one, had a rotting turnip for a head and was honestly trying to kill people, and he freaked me the hell out.

The De Danann Tales by Michael Scott. Again, kids thrown into the deep end of Irish Mythology, though with a more overt fantasy take in this case, and a bunch of elemental powers and sword and sorcery tropes thrown in. Never hurts.

More on the Welsh/English/Norse side than the Irish, but Alan Garner's "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen". There were other stuff with Norse myth elements as well. The Forbidden Game trilogy by LJ Smith (I never got into her vampire series, but Forbidden Game was the best). Catherine Fisher's Snowwalker trilogy. "Five Days of Luke" by Diana Wynne Jones. A lot of Wynne Jones, actually, I always liked her stuff.

I think we can safely say that I had a think for mythological adventure stories as a kid? Or, being honest, even still.

Re: Based on #9

[hands4healing]

When I was a Girl Scout Summer Camp counselor, one of the girls in my cabin had Howliday Inn and I read it one afternoon during our down time. It impressed me so much, I wound up buying the first three in the series.

I remember reading a lot of Greco-Roman myths as a child, as well as the Tizz a Pony series, pretty much anything by Walter Farley (or horse books in general), any of the collie series by Terhune, the Magic series by Edgar Eager, the family Pye series...there were a lot of series, weren't there?

Re: Based on #9

[pantasma]

Dude, Animorphs all the way. Especially when that one guy got stuck as an eagle, but could still morph to other animals? Broke my 8y/o heart.

When I was a little kid, it was all about The Magic Treehouse, then around grade 3/4 it was Harry Potter (and Animorphs), Charles de Lint's books around middle school (they're *technically* a series, but they're all in the same fictional town somewhere in northern Ontario-ish, so you saw the main character of one book as the background characters in several others). There (many, many, many) others, but those are the ones that stick out from my childhood.

Sweet Valley, Pippi Longstocking, some historical fiction series

[(Anonymous)]

- Sweet Valley Twins; I feel like I must be the only person who read those instead of SVH; it seems like all the "cool" kids read the latter and snubbed the former. SVH seemed way too emo for me, even at eight or nine. (Knowing what was in the books I can't believe eight year olds read them.)

- Pippi Longstocking. :D Although I don't think I liked the sequels as much as the first book.

- There was this book series that really was possibly a bit of a ripoff of the American Girl Collection, about girls in various historical periods... I swear "Attic" was in the series title. One book was about a girl in the Middle Ages whose best friend was married, but she wasn't (not Catherine, Called Birdy, although I loved that one), another was about a free black girl in Louisiana who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, although that may have been another series. There was also a book about a girl in 1400s Africa. Anyone know the series? (Also, is it just me or was kids/middle grade/teen historical fiction often better than adult historical fiction?)

Re: Based on #9

[xalus]

Oh man, I must have checked out all the Bunnicula books about a thousand times from the library.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School, anyone?

Re: Based on #9

[sarillia]

Animorphs! I just reread every single book in the series and went back to daydreaming about my first Mary Sue that I created for that series. I also remember The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks. I think I actually remember an excerpt being in a language arts book in elementary school.

I also loved the Wayside School books. I lost the first couple a while back and I'm still upset about it.

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of these that have already been listed and also The Great Brain!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Brain

Re: Based on #9

[nightscale]

The Beatrix Potter books, I used to read them all the time when I was a kid. And Animals of Farthing Wood, which was a cartoon about woodland animals which I remember loving.

Oh, wow, blast from the past (though I actually still have some of these on my shelves)

[(Anonymous)]

I loved Bunnicula and Howliday Inn was good.

The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series – read them over and over

Sideways Stories from Wayside School

The Westing Game

Ruth Chew’s witch and magic books (The Wednesday Witch, No Such Thing as a Witch,The Witch's Buttons, The Would-Be Witch, Witch's Broom, Secondhand Magic, Mostly Magic, The Witch at the Window)

Lois Duncan (Ransom, Down a Dark Hall, Summer of Fear, Killing Mr. Griffin, Daughters of Eve, Stranger with My Face, The Third Eye) and Joan Lowery Nixon (A Deadly Game of Magic, The House on Hackman’s Hill, The Stalker) for the scary stuff.

Some of Christopher Pike’s stuff (Weekend, Last Act, Remember Me, Fall into Darkness, Final Friends Trilogy)

Anne of Green Gables series

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, The Witches, and Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

Canby Hall, Sweet Valley, and Choose Your Own Adventure books

Re: Based on #9

[caffeine_buzz]

I didn't care too much for most of the Bunnicula books but for some reason I really loved Howliday Inn and pretty much read that book to bits.

I read the Sweet Valley kids and Babysitter's Little Sister books not so much because I liked them but because my older sister read the regular Sweet Valley High and Babysitter's Club books and I wanted to read books like she read. I also read the Peanut Butter and Jelly books and one series called Friends4Ever that my sister ended up borrowing from me all the time.

I also read a bunch of animal-based series: Thoroughbred, The Saddle Club and one short series called Animal Inn about a vet's office (I mainly remember that one because there was a book where the main character's dog died and it really upset me because it was right about the time my family's ancient schnauzer died). And I read a ton of Marguerite Henry books. My favorite was one called Cinnabar The One O'Clock Fox which I took out of the library so often my mom would start complaining about it, "You took out that book again?". Actually about a month ago my sister was visiting from out of town and we were in a Half Price Books and she found the same hardcover edition the library used to have, so at long last it's finally mine, all mine.

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

I read all sorts of books. Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins, Judy Blume, Lois Duncun, Paula Danziger, Sweet Valley books, Canby Hall, Star Trek Novels. All sorts of books whose names and authors escape me for right now.

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

everything

EVERYTHING

e v e r y t h i n g

no srsly I thought about this question and went into vapor lock because I read constantly, voraciously, and swiftly throughout my childhood. The library only allowed you to check out 10 books a week on a kids' card and it was never enough. my parents grounded me by making me stop reading for a day

I READ IN THE SHOWER

but special shout-out to the Redwall series and to a whooooole lotta Star Trek books.

Re: Based on #9

[(Anonymous)]

My Teacher is an Alien. Goosebumps. Redwall!!!