Please or to access all these features

Children's books

Join in for children's book recommendations.

books from the 1980s that no-one else remembers!

343 replies

GoldenGreen · 21/12/2010 11:22

For some reason I have been compulsively trying to track down half-remembered books that I read as a young teenager - not sure why as they are not classics but I would really like to revisit them. I had hoped my younger sister might have picked them up but she never liked the same books as me.

Does this ring a bell with anyone:

Series with the children of detectives - I think a brother and a sister and an adopted sister (her parents were police officers who died - I think she was Irish, red haired and fiery - obviously) - they solved mysteries based around school. In one they caught a vandal because of the paricular way he wrote "H". In another there was a school trip to France with an old fashioned type of Polaroid camera - this was a key part of the plot but can't remember any more!

The other book that I remember reading obsessively was a teen romance one with a girl whose parents were repressed and abusive. She was not allowed any freedom at all but managed to meet a boy and sneak out. The thing I most remember is that she had no clothes apart from school uniform so she had to embroider flowers on her school shirt when she went out to meet him.

Anyone else got any vague memories of books they once loved and that no-one else ever remembers?

OP posts:
nickelbabyjesus · 29/12/2010 10:45

there's a publisher called Jane Nissen Books that's brought quite a lot of the old books into print - some of the Shoes series that weren't popular enough; Green SMoke (one of the R Dragon books by Rosemary Manning); The Magic City (E Nesbitt); the house in norham gardens; etc etc.

talkingnonsense · 28/12/2010 16:52

Allnightlong that is by Caroline cooney and I think is called the face on the milk carton, sequel the voice on the radio. All her books very readable, but sometimes only published in the us.

BellaBearisWideAwake · 27/12/2010 08:31

Lotte and Lisa by Erich Kastner (same guy as wrote Emil and the Detectives

ShoshanaBlue · 27/12/2010 01:12

Does anyone remember a book about twins called Lottie and Lisa? Their parents divorced and split the kids like some sort of assets and the kids met at some sort of summer camp years later (ok, this was a long time ago and for me it was the first time I'd ever heard of a summer camp and rarely came across divorce). I was fascinated and read it lots of times (we didn't have it, it was in the library) as it opened up a whole new exotic world!!!!

glastocat · 26/12/2010 14:07

DandyDan you are a genius! That has been bugging me for decades, no-one else remembered them at all. I'm off to order them again, thanks a million, you've made my day!

splishsplosh · 25/12/2010 23:29

Have read so many of these - makes me want to go and re read them all again

anyone else ever read The Silver Crown? Great book, just looked it up, and i never realised it was by Robert O'Brien as well

DandyDan · 25/12/2010 22:46

Glastocat - re the sci-fi books written by a teenager: I read some semi-sci-fi books written by a late teen just under 30 years ago - but they were short stories, all three volumes (although some of the stories might have been set in the same "universe")- by a guy from near Sheffield called David Hutchinson. The first anthology of stories was called Thumbprints. Some distintly creepy stories and half-way to decent (at least I thought so back then). Never seen them since, though the author is still around. The other volumes were Torn Air, Fool's Gold and The Paradise Equation.

RumourOfAHurricane · 25/12/2010 00:14

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

aristomache · 25/12/2010 00:04

Just thought of some more all by betsy byars, nightswimmers, the cartoonist and the TV kid.

I remember that the youngest child in the nightswimmers thought that the bowlwater plant was an actual growing plant, when it was actually a nuclear plant

ScatterChasse · 24/12/2010 16:34

It was The Dragon in the Harbour. Thanks PatientGriselda!

PatientGriselda · 24/12/2010 16:30

And being, not beige...

PatientGriselda · 24/12/2010 16:29

One of, I mean.

PatientGriselda · 24/12/2010 16:29

The dragon singing Long Way To Tipperary one is one off the Dragon series by Rosemary Manning, scatterchase. I remember beige read that a one of a class of 7 year olds.

scouserabroad · 24/12/2010 16:09

Ooh not out of print? Cool they should be quite easy to find on Amazon then! I remember in the early 1990s they were impossible to find in bookshops.

I liked Jinny & Shantih too, but the mystical side of it used to bug me a bit sometimes.

BellaBearisWideAwake · 24/12/2010 16:07

Does anyone remember a series called 'Me, Jill Robinson and the ...'

I had one where she took part ona quiz show. They moved to a New Town somewhere and she made friends with the mayor's daughter in lived in the penthouse of a tower block.

Southwestwhippet · 24/12/2010 16:05

I don't think the Jill books are out of print, I have them all and one or two are fairly modern editions. There are 9 in total.

Jill's Gymkhanha
A stable for Jill
Jill has two ponies
Jill enjoys her ponies
Jill's Riding Club
Rossettes for Jill
Pony jobs for Jill
Jill and the Perfect pony
Jill's pony trek

[whispers] have just finished re-reading them all and my Jinny and Shanti books about the girl and her arab - they are the perfect size for holding are reading whilst nursing DD to sleep.

scouserabroad · 24/12/2010 15:59

I read My friend Flicka, and as many of the Jill books as I could find - I think they might have already been out of print when I started reading them.

I quite liked Jill, looking back she was quite efficient & got things done, and didn't take any crap - the opposite to the Enid Blyton type girls!

ScatterChasse · 24/12/2010 15:46

Oh, does anyone know one about a dragon who swam up a river. I remember it was an old copy when I read it, so not sure when it was published.

He was trying to get to Weymouth I think, and he met two men at a pub and he sang with them, a version of It's a Long Way to Tipperary, but with the words changed.

FunnyLittleFrog · 24/12/2010 15:38

Back Home was adapted for TV a while ago I think. The woman who played Raquel in Corrie was in it.

One that has just come to me is about a girl who lived on a planet called Isis with a robot. She meets a boy who I think is from Earth (called Mark?) and they fall in love, despite the fact that she has green skin. It might have been called Isis but I'm not sure.

ScatterChasse · 24/12/2010 15:31

Who mentioned Back Home? I loved that book, wasn't she called Rusty? And she came back from being evacuated to the US and is sent to a really strict boarding school and is very unhappy. She thinks about throwing herself off the scaffolding at one point I think.

And The Drina series.Must find those again. I have a few chapters of one in a ballet compendium type thing. I'm not sure I ever read the later ones.

We did Red Sky in the Morning at school, and Z for Zachariah and Flowers for Algernon too. I'd completely forgotten until this thread!

PrettyCandlesAndTinselToo · 24/12/2010 14:35

The Oliver Sacks story/Robin Williams film is Awakenings, and it is a true story of his own experiences as a relatively young doctor, not a novel. The character RW plays is based on OS himself.

I wonder whether Flowers for Algernon was influenced by it?

CommanderDrool · 24/12/2010 14:21

Re: Flowers for Algernon - you could be right, the plot us very similar to an Oliver Sacks story which later became a film ...Robin Williams? Can't remember name.

Did anyone read My afriend Flicka or the Jill books on if which was titled 'Jill Has Two Ponies' which made me think Jill was a touch greedy.

GodRestYeEllieMentalmen · 24/12/2010 12:37

thank you!

The Gemnma books were awesome!
She had such a cool life....

Anyone read Greengage summer or An Episode of Sparrows? Think they were both Rumer Goden

GrownupsLikeQuiet · 24/12/2010 12:19

The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones
The Kevin and Sadie series by Joan Lingard
Anne of Green Gables
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Judy Blume
Z for Zacharia
all of Ian Serralier that I could get my hands on...

the best thing is I still have most of them. I can't wait for my children to get to that age Xmas Grin

Feenie · 24/12/2010 11:59

I thought he chose not to take the drug any more in Flowers for Algernon?