Grey Cat posted:

I was probably reading something more like:

BeastOfTheEdelwood posted:

The "there is no 13th floor" joke makes a lot of sense in hindsight, since a lot of buildings skip that number. I didn't pick up on that until I was older.

Erin M. Fiasco posted:

Sammy! I think about Sammy a weirdly large amount. Something about him specifically being a "dead rat" in a whole bunch of smelly rain coats both intrigued me and freaked me out. I loved all of Louis Sachar's books growing up, and Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger was a favorite. That one had a substitute teacher who had an ear on top of her head that could read minds and she was mean because every partner she ever had broke up with her once they realized she had an ear on her head. It had a happy ending

Hazo posted:

And it was the “Nineteenth Story.”

As in, the nineteenth story of the book consisted of simply, “There is no nineteenth story. Sorry.”

PizzaProwler posted:

It was the 19th floor that was missing

free hubcaps posted:

The funny thing about red fern is you are sad as gently caress when the dogs die, but when the rear end in a top hat neighbor kid falls on an axe and gets disemboweled it's just like "eh he was an rear end in a top hat anyways"

Action Jacktion posted:

I remember a lot of books like that. It's like they wanted you to learn as soon as possible that the world is horrible. Anyone else read The Pinballs by Betsy Byars? It's about three kids who are in foster care for various depressing reasons, like one who's in a wheelchair because his drunk-driving father ran over his legs. Byars must've resolved every situation in the book by thinking of what would be the most depressing outcome, like the wheelchair kid really likes KFC and at one point the other characters go out and he hopes they bring some back, but they forget and he's sad. Then another time they do remember to bring some back, but in the meantime something else depressing has happened to him so he's too sad to enjoy it.

My Side of the Mountain.

Those sorts of books were always disturbing because all the bad things were happening to 'you' instead of some character. One that sticks in my mind had a bad ending that went "The last thing you ever see is a shotgun butt rushing toward your face."

Cornwind Evil posted:

I was returning to this thread to post that when I remembered it.

JESUS CHRIST, even for young adult melodrama, Blubber is basically 'young teenage girls are innate psychopathic sadists who once they decide they want to destroy someone for fun, induce a torture routine that dictator secret police would take notice of', backed up by sheer utter banality. The main tormentor, Wendy, is basically shown to have no scruples or actual beliefs at all: she stooges out two of her so-called friends because, well, we never find out, probably because she'd find it funny, and when one of them finally puts her foot down, she drops a racial slur in regards to that person's (Chinese) best friend. And just to top it off, no one learns anything, no one really gets punished for their awful behavior, the adults are completely useless, and by the end there's just been a bunch of musical chairs in regards to 'friendships', when it's been demonstrated that to this vicious lot, 'friendship' is mostly just a series of power based transactions.

quote:

In the days of cyber bullying and much greater awareness of suicide, it basically reads as the equivalent of splatterpunk horror for young female social interaction. Either be a monster perfect alpha nightmare bitch who has all the power, or pray you never draw their ilk's attention, or else your life will be hell and there will be nothing you can do to prevent it.

The worst part is, it's not like the book is WHOLLY unrealistic, because I'm sure plenty of people have stories about how monstrous teenagers of both sexes, with their not yet proper developed empathy brain centers, can be, and just how banally (really, that's what gets me the most, the BANALITY of the acts) they can act if they're very slow to develop them or, for one reason or another, just don't. I recall a story (so, pure hearsay but whatever) of someone who went to a bad school, there was a feud between two older teenage girls over a boy, one was pregnant, and the other when there was some big distraction (I think a legit fire?) decided this was the best time to attack/'get back' at her 'enemy', which she did by attacking the heavily pregnant girl on the stairs and deliberately stomping/jumping on her belly to attempt to kill the unborn child. Just so she could hurt her 'rival', completely oblivious to just how far over the line and 'you can't take this back' such an action can/could be. But, again, this is a story heard secondhand so it could well be wholly made up, but I think it says it all that you can't dismiss the possibility that a teenage girl could be that ignorantly monstrous.

postmodifier posted:

when it comes to the influential books of my childhood, it goes:

1) mcgurk detective agency
2) boxcar kids
3) animorphs

and this absolute fuckin gem of a book that I'm shocked hasn't been adapted to film/tv

root beer posted:

My daughter is going to be 12 this September, and I have been dreading for years her inevitable middle school experience. Mine was terrible, as most people’s were, but at least I’m a guy and my experience was primarily one of isolation and loneliness. Fortunately, we found out about a public school in our area that focuses on art, so we enrolled her there and her friends will all be going there as well, and I think it’s going to be a place where everyone there is sort of in that outcast weirdo crowd, so there will be a greater deal of commonality—and thus empathy—among them. But good christ I still worry that her adolescence will be like what’s described in that book.

Erin M. Fiasco posted:

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson. I had no idea until just now that it was from the 70s, and New Zealand. It was a really fun one.

Lots of books about school plays gone ridiculous made an impression on me. I think about No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman a weirdly large amount for what was essentially a young adult comedy book, because the jokes in it and situations get so absurd that they were impossible to forget. It starts with a protagonist named Wallace Wallace and goes on with a secondary character who mashes together idioms and climaxes with the entire school putting on an "updated" version of Shiloh where the dog lives, except someone put a bomb on the dog plush and it goes off at the end.

CoffeeBoofer posted: