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Anyone else have to read A Separate Peace in middle school and have no idea at the time about the actual relationship of the main characters?
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Apr 27, 2024 14:51
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Metric Skeleton posted:I have vague memories of some weird book I read decades ago when I was a kid, in the nineties. It had a distinctly strange A Stitch in Time sort of feel to it. The only detail I remember sort of clearly is a line to the effect of “We’re not going to hell, we’re just passing through it.” Maybe one character was a big amoeba? Maybe? It may not have even been a children’s book. I wish I could recall anything else about it. This could be Borgel, by Daniel Pinkwater. Borgel is a tourist in "time-space-and-the-other," which he navigates using his broken down time machine of a car, the Dorbzeldge, manufactured in "the old country." He's the uncle of Melvin the main character, and the book is about them going on a road trip through space and other dimensions. They definitely visit Hell as part of this. And there’s an amoeba guy that works at an intergalactic root beer stand where they hang out for a while. It's probably my favorite of Pinkwater's, but he wrote so many good ones. The Snarkout Boys is my "this should have been a 90s movie" pick. Also gotta love Lizard Music, Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario and Alan Mendelssohn: Boy From Mars. feetnotes fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Apr 27, 2024 |
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Apr 27, 2024 15:15
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Anyone read any of the "Adventure" series of books by Willard Price? Each one is titled "Something (usually a place or thing, like africa, volcano, the south seas, amazon etc) Adventure". Its the exploits of two pretty much teenagers who work for their dad who has a business collecting animal specimens that end up going to Zoos and such. They encounter various obstacles like Animals trying to eat them, business rivals, criminals trying to steal their poo poo and so on. Not every book is just about collecting animals. In one they accompany a scientist who goes aboard an olde tymey whaling ship, or another where they're trying to do some pearl diving or some poo poo. I don't think I have them anymore, but I had/read South Seas Adventure, Underwater Adventure, Whale Adventure and Cannibal Adventure.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:29
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Fudge is Caillou if he didn’t have leukemia.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:37
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I read a book about "Indians" when I lived in Indiana and it somehow struck deep within me. The book (for kids) described how they walked silently through the forest on the sides of their feet, and I of course immediately began walking on the sides of my feet for max stealthiness....
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Apr 27, 2024 18:39
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teen witch posted:Speaking of gentle historical fiction, let me talk to you about American Girl books and the bonkers expensive dolls. The Pleasant Company knew drat well what they were doing. I had Molly! I had Kit! The story about Molly being the star of the tap solo was one of my favorite books though. I BEGGED my mom to give me pin curls because I was an idiot child who learned nothing. In the book, Molly gets an ear infection from sleeping in wet pin curls to look perfect for the tap solo, and ends up missing the performance entirely. My pin curls didn't turn out great, I think.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:43
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redshirt posted:I read a book about "Indians" when I lived in Indiana and it somehow struck deep within me. The book (for kids) described how they walked silently through the forest on the sides of their feet, and I of course immediately began walking on the sides of my feet for max stealthiness.... Walking in barefoot, or with a thin sole is good for that. You can feel the sticks that are about to break and then not step on them.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:45
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I still remember reading one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid and one of the bad endings had your head explode, complete with a quite graphic illustration. That was nightmare fuel for kid me. I still wonder if they ever checked any of those books for child-appropriateness before publishing them.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:49
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Did you cheat at CYOA books?
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Apr 27, 2024 18:57
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Duh
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Apr 27, 2024 19:06
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Tulalip Tulips posted:I read Walk Two Moons the same year my mom left me with my paternal grandma and step-grandpa so that book hit in a very, very personal way that's hard for a 9 year old to explain. Even as a 6 year old the boxcar kids didn't sit right with me because like 2/3s of the way through the first book they were adopted by a rich guy who moves the boxcar into his back yard so they can keep playing house in it. Stolen hobo valor.
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Apr 27, 2024 19:17
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redshirt posted:Did you cheat at CYOA books? Inside UFO 54-40 famously had an ending you couldn't reach by making choices in the story, only by just flipping to that part and reading it:   
Action Jacktion fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Apr 27, 2024 |
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Apr 27, 2024 20:22
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MrMidnight posted:I read a bunch of Louis Sachar books when I was young because I liked the Wayside school ones so much. I remember that one. The kid took a, "I wont tell any jokes for a month" pledge, and his comedy got better because he evolved an internal filter. People also started being nicer to him because he wasn't running his mouth 24/7 trying to be funny.
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Apr 27, 2024 21:09
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...! posted:I still remember reading one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid and one of the bad endings had your head explode, complete with a quite graphic illustration. That was nightmare fuel for kid me. I still wonder if they ever checked any of those books for child-appropriateness before publishing them. The ending that freaked me out was, I'm pretty sure, from Mystery of Chimney Rock. I forget the exact setup, but you end up picking up an endless series of broken pieces of a vase or something off the floor and putting them on the table, over and over, never getting closer to finishing. Instead of THE END it says THERE IS NO END. 
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Apr 27, 2024 21:18
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:I remember that one. The kid took a, "I wont tell any jokes for a month" pledge, and his comedy got better because he evolved an internal filter. People also started being nicer to him because he wasn't running his mouth 24/7 trying to be funny. Oh drat, now I remember that book. I think he was gonna get a SNES if he held his promise but blew it at the last minute on purpose.
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Apr 27, 2024 21:32
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There was a Give Yourself Goosebumps book where you found some weird food in an abandoned fridge that could make you small or giant... but the only ending I actually remember is the early one you get if you choose to hide inside the fridge to get away from a bully. No magic here, you just get trapped in the fridge and slowly suffocate to death. That was the first time I ever learned that this was an unfortunately recurring problem with old fridges.
MiracleFlare fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Apr 27, 2024 |
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Apr 27, 2024 21:33
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Impossibly Perfect Sphere posted:Anyone else have to read A Separate Peace in middle school and have no idea at the time about the actual relationship of the main characters? I didn’t read it in my English class, but I knew kids who did in theirs and I recall them claiming it was extremely gay.
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Apr 27, 2024 22:43
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Fudge grew up to become Albert Einstein. Strange, but true.
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Apr 27, 2024 23:13
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I really liked this book as a kid, anyone ever read it?
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Apr 28, 2024 01:13
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Impossibly Perfect Sphere posted:Anyone else have to read A Separate Peace in middle school and have no idea at the time about the actual relationship of the main characters? That doesn't seem possible
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Apr 28, 2024 04:27
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I remember surreptitiously reading "Are you there God, it's me, Margaret".
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Apr 28, 2024 04:43
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skasion posted:The fourth Wrinkle in Time book is the craziest imo. The twins get teleported into the buildup to Noah’s flood where there’s dwarf mammoth, manticore that says “onions”, they get in a throuple with Noah’s granddaughter because shirts haven’t been invented yet, meanwhile a bunch of Tanith Lee-assed fallen angels are vamping around trying to gently caress with everything. There are also pontifications on the sexual import of red hair I thought you were just bullshitting, but I checked and that's a pretty accurate plot summary. Welp
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Apr 28, 2024 04:53
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CoffeeBoofer posted:I really liked this book as a kid, anyone ever read it? In constant rotation with Behind The Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassidy and Ghosts by Antonia Barber.
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Apr 28, 2024 05:15
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No idea if it's middle school reading of any sort, in class or found by one's own self or whatnot, but I recently found out that the author of Picnic at Hanging Rock supposedly wrote a chapter that explained the deep mystery of the book. And it's probably best that unlike Clockwork Orange, that chapter was cut entirely. You want to know why? Here's a hint: I suspect perhaps the worst episode of Star Trek Voyager was inspired by the 'what really happened'. redshirt posted:I remember surreptitiously reading "Are you there God, it's me, Margaret". All I remember about that book is that it presented young teenage women as really, REALLY wanting to have their first period, because it meant they were now more adult, or something. I wager a lot of adult women would probably be wanting to tell the girls to enjoy the timeframe when they don't have to deal with a menstrual cycle.
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Apr 28, 2024 09:44
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coronatae posted:Daphne's Book was something I randomly picked up at the library because I like the name Daphne. Think about the class weirdo nobody wants to be friends with. Think about getting paired with them for an assignment to write a picture book. Think about eventually coming to like her and being her friend. And then finding out she lives in a run-down farmhouse with her little sister and her grandmother, who has dementia, with no power or water. It's sad as hell but I remember liking it. I feel like almost every book I remember from my childhood is because they were either somehow subversive or depressing. There was one where the kid's parents got divorced and his mom remarried some arborist who have her a tree on the first date. Couldn't tell you anything else about it! Even Ramona was somehow a bit depressing in the era where her dad lost his job and the family had no money. Plus there's Dear Mr. Henshaw.
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Apr 28, 2024 13:30
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I'd like to take this opportunity to praise Comic Books. I am old enough that when I was young, Comic Books had a very distinct negative association with them. They're trash, garbage, junk, bad influence, etc. But around age 4 or so I got a Spider-Man comic and was immediately hooked, devouring every comic I could get my hands on. My parents were cool in that they were not anti-comic at all, we were just poor AF so comics were too expensive for the most part. But I got what I could and read them over and over and over. Reading, for kids, is a GOOD THING. So I would think we should encourage kids to read whatever they want, so long as they are reading. I vividly remember reading words I did not know, and going to the dictionary to look it up. Learning! With Spider-Man!
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Apr 28, 2024 14:36
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The menstrual belt / cup rig Margaret wears confused me as a young boy only familiar with tampons and pads. Reading that book bought me a lot of good credit with ladies I would meet in the future though
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Apr 28, 2024 15:00
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Cornwind Evil posted:
I mean I would have been excited to break through puberty milestones too if I actually went through the version that matched my gender identity.
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Apr 28, 2024 22:23
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I could probably just look it up, but then I couldn't make this awesome post. There was a book by Avi. Don't know if that's a first name or last name. Some old rear end house had a blood stain in a bedroom closet or something and a slave kid's (named caleb iirc) spirit came up through the stain and would hang out with the kid who occupied the room. Anyone read that one? I did but it had to have been like 30 years ago or more
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Apr 28, 2024 22:29
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wesleywillis posted:I could probably just look it up, but then I couldn't make this awesome post. That is Something Upstairs. I never read that particular Avi book, but he had lots of super interesting ones that really stuck with people. The Avi book I think about a weirdly large amount is Nothing But The Truth, a "documentary novel" telling the story of a kid who gets in trouble in class for humming the National Anthem instead of being quiet, seemingly just to be a little annoying, and how it balloons into this giant media circus. It's told through newspaper clippings, script-style scenes, "recordings and transcripts", and such. It has an ending that is quite sad all things considered, definitely made me feel things in the heart. It's very funny looking it up and seeing a ton of recent Goodreads and Google Reviews clearly left by kids who were mad they were assigned to read it in school  Oh, there is another book that I think about a lot, Bud Not Buddy, about a kid in the 20s who hitchhikes to Grand Rapids, Michigan, because he's convinced his father is a famous jazz musician. I loved jazz growing up so it was really cool to me to read such an energetic period piece.
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Apr 28, 2024 22:39
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emSparkly posted:I mean I would have been excited to break through puberty milestones too if I actually went through the version that matched my gender identity. My mom got me puberty book for boys with a full size picture of an orchidometer the reader could hold their balls up to, and I did! Now that's quality children's literature. The Moon Monster fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 23:02
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I remember reading the 1973 Better Homes & Gardens Family Medical Guide, initially to look at pictures of parts I didn't have, but later to learn about the parts I did. Nothing inspires a kid to learn quite like the sense that they ought not to be.
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Apr 29, 2024 00:33
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emSparkly posted:I mean I would have been excited to break through puberty milestones too if I actually went through the version that matched my gender identity. I don't know anyone who was excited to get her period. It was just something else to make us self-conscious and miserable. You get made fun of for having it, you get mocked if you haven't had it yet, boys are loving gross about it, and the periods themselves are terrible, especially at first when they're irregular.
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Apr 29, 2024 00:37
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The Moon Monster posted:Even as a 6 year old the boxcar kids didn't sit right with me because like 2/3s of the way through the first book they were adopted by a rich guy who moves the boxcar into his back yard so they can keep playing house in it. Stolen hobo valor. Didn’t they still have hobo dinners of milk and bread after being taken in by papaw moneysacks? Seemed like the lifestyle gave them Stockholm syndrome. Also, Benny was a little poo poo. Wish they sold him for some Thunderbird or something.
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Apr 29, 2024 01:26
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Erin M. Fiasco posted:The Avi book I think about a weirdly large amount is Nothing But The Truth, a "documentary novel" telling the story of a kid who gets in trouble in class for humming the National Anthem instead of being quiet, seemingly just to be a little annoying, and how it balloons into this giant media circus. It's told through newspaper clippings, script-style scenes, "recordings and transcripts", and such. It has an ending that is quite sad all things considered, definitely made me feel things in the heart. Holy god I remember this book. We read it in maybe 2003, the patriotism media circus hit different in such a freshly post-9/11 America. I think our teacher had to spell out for us that he was being an obnoxious little poo poo and humming it for the sake of being defiant.
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Apr 29, 2024 02:11
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Cornwind Evil posted:No idea if it's middle school reading of any sort, in class or found by one's own self or whatnot, but I recently found out that the author of Picnic at Hanging Rock supposedly wrote a chapter that explained the deep mystery of the book. The missing chapter was finally published as The Secret of Hanging Rock twenty years after the novel (and a few years after the author's death). But I always liked the movie better than the book (or that mini-series from a few years ago). Erin M. Fiasco posted:Oh, there is another book that I think about a lot, Bud Not Buddy, about a kid in the 20s who hitchhikes to Grand Rapids, Michigan, because he's convinced his father is a famous jazz musician. I loved jazz growing up so it was really cool to me to read such an energetic period piece. I read that just last year. The idea is that the kid's mother dies and he never knew his father, but she had photos of the musician so he assumes that must be his father. The kid walks in while the band is practicing and just says to the guy "You're my father." Everyone says stuff like "He can't be your father" but no one asks the most obvious question, "Why do you think he's your father?" And the kid actually starts living and traveling with the band, who still don't ask anything. I counted, and sixty pages pass between the kid meeting the guy and him giving any explanation for why he thinks he's his father. I know it's a kids book but that would've bugged me as a kid. Action Jacktion fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Apr 29, 2024 02:30
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feetnotes posted:This could be Borgel, by Daniel Pinkwater. Borgel is a tourist in "time-space-and-the-other," which he navigates using his broken down time machine of a car, the Dorbzeldge, manufactured in "the old country." He's the uncle of Melvin the main character, and the book is about them going on a road trip through space and other dimensions. They definitely visit Hell as part of this. And there’s an amoeba guy that works at an intergalactic root beer stand where they hang out for a while. The Pinkwater books were great. The only thing I've read or seen that feels a bit like them is The Mighty Boosh.
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Apr 29, 2024 03:21
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Oh, wow, I had completely forgotten about that series. I had at least one, and I'm not sure I read any more than that. Hatchet was probably my favorite read as a kid; I read it a lot, and I still remember most of the story beats. I don't think I even learned about the existence of the sequels until I was in my 30s. I also re-read My Side of the Mountain a lot. I wanna say there was another book in the theme, about a boy and a wolf in the wilds, but it's way too vague to remember anything about it. I was into space as a kid (still am), and I had books 1-5 of the Young Astronauts series, but my parents could never find the 6th and final book. Eventually they agreed to put a 'wanted' ad in the kid's space magazine Odyssey, and I actually got a response and we managed to get the 6th book! I don't remember much about the series; I think it was a bunch of teenagers or young adults training for a big mission to Mars, and the last book or two they actually do travel to Mars. Another favorite was Bundle of Sticks, where a kid reluctantly attends a karate class and eventually beats up the school bully after he kicks the protag's dog on like the last day of school. Very cathartic, and I still remember 'horse stance'. There were a couple of Encyclopedia Brown stories I read, and a couple still stick with me--Brown disproving the nemesis' stupid cubic egg thing because his 'skydiver' didn't have a backup parachute, and that right-handed men trim their left sideburns higher than their right. I remember reading Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing and Superfudge, but not much else in the series. I still recall the sixth graders at the new school in Superfudge singing that they ran the school because they were in sixth grade now. I specifically remember being younger than them when I read the book, so they were the older kids, and they were obviously correct. Reading through the thread made me remember another book, that I wanna say was called Tweezers or something, because the protagonist always carried a pair with him and regularly solved minor problems with them (including knowing how to spell the word at a spelling bee). The Westing Game is probably the first time a book ever blew my mind with its reveal. By the time I hit high school, I was reading my dad's collection of old scifi paperbacks and Star Wars novels. Did a book report on The Stand in either 9th or 12th grade, the years I had the cool english teacher. I chose the ending of the book to read out because it was exciting, didn't involve the devil's semen, and it had swears he let me say in class.
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Apr 29, 2024 05:32
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Realizing now that I’ll never recapture the high that is being 9 and reading a new Captain Underpants book. Powerful Katrinka posted:I don't know anyone who was excited to get her period. It was just something else to make us self-conscious and miserable. You get made fun of for having it, you get mocked if you haven't had it yet, boys are loving gross about it, and the periods themselves are terrible, especially at first when they're irregular. Getting my first period in 2002 was just cramps, moodiness, and discomfort, and you couldn’t talk to anyone really about it outside of your mom and that felt weird, because you’re 11 y’know? It was embarrassing if not a bit stigmatized to even acknowledge that they existed. If you used pads you were a prude but tampons had a whole host of terrible, unscientific associations. Any public mention of actual periods were commercials with the blue liquid and no period looked or behaved like that. And they were directed towards adults, rarely teens at best, let alone pre-teens. Again, I really hope it’s less lovely for kids because tying getting your period with entrance to womanhood is a terrible idea on so many fronts. Congrats, everyone’s going to treat you weird, downright creepy or assume all actions are due to “bein on the rag” - you are between 9 and 15 and you’re just to simply ~accept~ this.
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Apr 29, 2024 10:24
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