Favourite teen books from your dim and distant pasts!

[madamehooch]

Not really adult books we used to read long before we should have done but books aimed at teenagers. I remember reading 'Waiting for the Sky to Fall' by Jacqueline Wilson no less, long before she reached Tracy Beaker fame. I also recall thinking that I would never want to read anything other than the four books in the 'Little Women' series. Obviously, I did but this feeling I had when I was 12 inspired me to set up children's reading groups throughout the city where I live, to encourage children 'stuck in a rut' with their reading to try something new. I think I may have my original Louisa May Alcott's somewhere, purchased from a charity shop for my birthday and covered in blue flowery wallpaper with fancy writing on the front done by my sister!

[Takver]

The Pennington books & the ones about Ruth (Fly by Night I think was the first one) by KM Peyton, also the Flambards series, particularly Edge of the Cloud.

[YoniOneWayOfLife]

I came here to say KM Peyton.

[YoniOneWayOfLife]

And the L Shaped Room.

[madamehooch]

Can't believe that I've never read 'Flambards!' Am off to the library to remedy that immediately:)

[QueenofDreams]

The Outsiders. SE Hinton. I loved it :)

[TheBirdsFellDownToDingADong]

Flambards was fab. So fancied those boys.

PS I love you. (not the crapola schmapola Celia thingy one!) one of the teen sweethearty type series. Was fab and so sad. Lent it to all my friends and their mums and we all cried buckets at it. Still have my copy at my Mum's.

The one about 2 kids growing up in Northern Ireland..... One protestant, one Catholic.....

L Shaped Room is still one of my favourite sets of books (though she should have bloody kept pursuing him and not gone off with wussy bloke in Book 3) (am still v cross about that)

There was another amazing book I found in the school library and then bought my own copy. I Never Promised You A Rose Garden- about growing up with MH issues just after the 2nd WW. (sounds jolly doesn't it? It was very very good. Beautifully written)

You Must Be Sisters - first book by Deborah Moggach, about sisters (no really!) one is very sensible, the other goes to uni and gets into all sorts of bother.

[TheBirdsFellDownToDingADong]

Oh lord, a dim and distant memory is opening up about Fly By Night.....what was it about Tak? I think I got that from the school library as well.

[kissmyshineymetalass]

The night World Series by L J Smith and the last vampire series by Christopher Pike were my absolute favourites in fact L J Smith still hasn't written the last book in the series of the night world so I never got to read it I was so disappointed

[Takver]

TheBirdsFellDown - was your N Ireland story The Twelfth day of July or Across the Barricades by Joan Lingard?

[Witchesbrewandbiscuits]

judy blume

[Takver]

Fly by Night was Ruth buying a run down pony very cheaply from a dealer, & then eventually eventing with him, I think. I can't remember if she met Pennington in that book or a later one.

Can't believe you haven't read the Flambards series, MadameHooch! I think its been re-issued recently even, DD came home with a nice new copy from school (though it was a bit on the soppy side for her taste )

[PattieOfurniture]

Adrian mole :)

[TheBirdsFellDownToDingADong]

That Fly By Night really rings a bell. I was v horsy and had anything and everything with a horse in it!

Across the Barricades- that's it. Only 2 yrs ago devised a book project for my furrin students based on it and look at me, couldn't even remember the name today!

[gwenniebee]

Michelle Magorian's books, and also The Mennyms by Silvia (?) Waugh.

[DuttyWine]

Judy Blume and Paula danziger I think, quite similar to Judy Blume.

The outsiders and rumble fish

Sweet valley high

Point horror

[TwllBach]

The Tomorrow When The WarBegan series by John Marsden.

Hands down the best series ever written. It is written for teens but I reread them annually because they are just fabulous.

[TwllBach]

Oh yes gwenniebee The Mennyms! And Michelle Magorian, did she write Goodbye Mr Tom and another one about a girl with red hair??

Malorie Blackmans Noughts and Crosses series is a good read as well.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

The Dark Is Rising series

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

"Forever", of course.

Books by Jean Ure.

Some weird book about astral projection and an evil twin - anyone help me out with the title??

There's other books after The L-Shaped Room?

[exexpat]

Adrian Mole - I was a year or two older so could feel comfortably superior...

Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy

Bilgewater and A Long Way From Verona by Jane Gardam

My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake

Lots of Thomas Pynchon, for some reason.

[exexpat]

(some of those not necessarily aimed at teenagers but had teenage protagonists - eg Gormenghast, My Brilliant Career - or were just very popular with teens at the time, like the Hitchhiker series)

[peggotty]

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Green.

[bigTillyMint]

Yes, yes, the L-shaped room set! I got them from the library aged about 12 or maybe 13. Loved them.

Got into other 60's stuff (that was probably a bit old for me) like A kind of Loving...

Went onto crap like Jilly Cooper!

[McPrice]

my favourite books as a teenage girl were once in a house on fire, jane ayre, bridget jones

[MrsRandom78]

Doctrine - stranger with my face. I still have a copy!!

Book I used to love about a girl who runs away to Canada to find her sister who had run away a few years before. Met a boy and fell in love along the way. Title was something about the moon I think. Would love to read it again!

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Wow, thanks MrsRandom