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StrangersInTheNight posted:Have a copy of Bruce Coville's The Search for Snout here in my hands, and the illustrations are credited to his wife, Katherine Coville. Katherine Coville’s illustrations were p drat sweet iirc RC and Moon Pie posted:There was a year of elementary school that Maniac Magee fever struck and every kid was checking it out of the library. That was my favorite book in all of elementary school and I want to give my copy of it to my daughter but I doubt she’d read it. It’s okay though, I think she knows well enough the lessons it was trying to teach without reading it. I read a lot of books in these two series, The Great Brain (JD Fitzgerald) and Soup (Robert Newton Peck). Just a bunch of stories about tweens doing dumb poo poo at the turn of the century and the ‘30s, respectively. They were contemporary with Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume but I assume they were considerably lesser known. I read pretty much all of whatever they’d written that was published up to the late ‘80s. root beer fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Feb 23, 2024 |
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Feb 23, 2024 20:44
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Cornwind Evil posted:Fudge, for essentially no reason at all (or a dumb kid reason that basically translates to 'No Reason at all'), decides to eat Dribble. Yes, he just swallows the turtle (again, very small). And of course, all the attention and care goes to the brat who did this, first to get the turtle out, and then to celebrate him being 'all better', never mind he killed his older brother's pet. And then they give him a fuckin mynah bird in the second book I hated the TV show, somehow Fudge was even worse, that fuckin kid
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Feb 23, 2024 20:59
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They were basically just YA melodrama but I enjoyed his Pigman books
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Feb 23, 2024 22:38
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Extra Large Marge posted:I read a lot of Gary Paulsen books, mostly having to do with survival in the woods (The Hatchet, The River, Brian's Winter) or at sea (Voyage of the Frog). In the small reading group I was in (four of us, we were ~gifted~), we did a unit where we’d read books like that with kids who’d been lost in the wilderness in some way, like Hatchet or Island of the Blue Dolphins. There was one called The Cay, about a white kid, Philip, from England—can’t remember whether he was privileged or just a regular white kid—whose ship wrecked on the coast of an island in the Caribbean in the inter-war period of the 20th century. In the wreck he was struck by a load-bearing wooden plank and left blinded. He was taken in and cared for by an old guy, Timothy, who’d been, can’t totally remember, a slave or the son of a slave. It ended with Philip being rescued after a hurricane hit the island, and Timothy died protecting him, basically being sandblasted by debris carried in the storm winds.* I don’t know if it’d be well-received these days because Timothy was written with a heavy Afro-Caribbean accent, but I liked his character anyway and was super bummed by the ending. I don’t remember whether I’d read the sequel, in which Philip revisits the island—or even if there was a sequel and I’m just thinking of Hatchet, where in the sequels the kid definitely returns to the wilderness where he’d been stranded. There was another book, called Homecoming, about a few kids whose single mother left them, and they eventually catch up to her to learn she is schizophrenic and in a catatonic state. Looking back, I wonder if our teacher was going through something because, drat, what a weird theme we were dealing with in that class. *I might not have all the details right because I’m pulling everything off the top of the dome here root beer fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 17:57
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BeastOfTheEdelwood posted:My jam in elementary school was Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, which was like a Celtic inspired high fantasy story. For those unfamiliar, the Disney movie "The Black Cauldron" is an adaptation of the first two books. Actually, The Black Cauldron was the second book in the series, but for the movie they combined the villain of the first book (The Book of Three) with the main villain of the overall series. Hell yeah Chronicles of Prydain. I burned through that series in a week. Great steppingstone for me to other fantasy stuff like Shannara, Book of Swords, Wheel of Time, leading eventually to Tolkien. Now that I think about it, I’ve never even seen The Black Cauldron.
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Feb 25, 2024 18:23
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A Strange Aeon posted:Anyone remember the Indian in the Cupboard? It was a series of 4 books I think about this cupboard that transports people from the past into the present via toy models. IIRC it was set in Britain? Loved those books; Boone, the sad alcoholic cowboy, was my favorite
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Feb 26, 2024 03:41
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My mom decided to read Homecoming and she really got into it and sought out Dicey’s Song. I may have to let her know there are more that follow, if she remembers.
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Feb 26, 2024 15:28
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When my sister was in middle school, she was into terminally ill teen melodrama by Lurlene McDaniel; here’s a selection from dozens: —Mother, Please Don’t Die —Why Did She Have To Die —If I Should Die Before I Wake —Last Dance —Letting Go of Lisa —Too Young to Die —Time to Let Go —Mourning Song —Baby Alicia Is Dying From the “One Last Wish” series, which seems pretty much like all the others? —All The Days Of Her Life —Sixteen And Dying —Reach for Tomorrow —A Time to Die —Please Don’t Die —Mourning Song —She Died Too Young —Mother, Help Me Live —Someone Dies, Someone Lives —A Season for Goodbye —Let Him Live She’d often add a horse girl element: —Where’s the Horse for Me / Three’s a Crowd —A Horse for Mandy (featuring a dreamboat who ends up dying of mouth cancer, from his chaw habit) I get it, there is a need for ways to cope with situations like this—McDaniel has a son with type I diabetes so she wanted to write about kids with life-changing illnesses. But I don’t know what percentage of girls who read these books were actually dying or were dating guys who were dying, so it all ends up seeming more like she’s just churning out a ton of very niche teen romance. Anyway, sometimes I’d get bored and read the last chapter and fake spoil it for my sister.
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Feb 27, 2024 19:23
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I hazily remember the Red Fern movie, was Wilford Brimley in it? Or was that the sequel, in which the kid from the book is grown up and inexplicably had his leg amputated in the time between? I may be thinking of something else altogether. [edit] it was indeed the sequel, he lost his leg in WWII, and it also starred Lisa Whelchel (Blair from The Facts of Life)
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Feb 27, 2024 23:46
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Cornwind Evil posted:I was returning to this thread to post that when I remembered it. 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.
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Apr 24, 2024 20:56
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CoffeeBoofer posted:Maniac Mcgee and Spider-Boy Hell yeah Maniac Magee, still have my copy at my parents’ house Also, don’t forget, noted turtle swallower Farley Drexel “Fudge” Hatcher was given a loving mynah bird because he was such a precious smartboy
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Apr 26, 2024 00:07
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wesleywillis posted:I met some dude who's last name was Pritchard years ago and I was immediately suspicious of him Did you call him Prick for short?
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Apr 26, 2024 01:54
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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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