80's-90's young adult fiction....do you remember the greats?

[AnnabelleLee]

I loved all the post apocalyptic stuff best: Brother in the Land, Plague 99, Empty World, Children of the Dust etc...but also all the Point Horror, Christopher Pike as well.

What camp were you in?

And does anyone remember one where a teen girl could astrally project herself? It's annoying me.

Love Robert Westall. Also Peter Dickenson's Changes trilogy - The Weathermonger is the first one. I also liked Annerton Pit and The Seventh Raven.

Yes, Tim Kennemore. Who was actually a female author. I still have a copy of The Fortunate Few, and consider it a classic. Truly a scary book, and not a vampire or ghost in sight!

And all the anorexia literature. Second Star to the Right was haunting and well written, but The Best Little Girl In The World was turgid stuff by comparison.

Yes, the Changes books are wonderful - odd and memorable.

Tim Kennemore was a woman?

In retrospect that's actually not that surprising given the un-stereotypicalness of the heroine - I'm remembering that line that was in all the blurbs, 'What do you think about when you're balancing upside-down on a beam?' 'The price of gold.'

chaosmonkey Pamela Smith did write a number of sequels to The Swish of the Curtain, which I haven't read but my kids have. Pretty expensive to buy, though, and never available in libraries.

Oh I think I remember The Children Next Door, manic! Wasn't it a bit like a better version of Tom's Midnight Garden ?

I've just found my special hardback 3 in 1 book of the babysitter 1, 2 and 3. I was so cool

Oh I've not read all of the thread but I read this book once so the details I remember are vague. Its set in New York and involves homeless teenagers living in San abandoned building I think? I'm pretty sure it was made into a film? I could be making all this up but I'd like to re read it.

Ooh, I was such a bookworm, I don't think I looked up from 10 to about 17. Terrible memory for titles though, but this thread is bringing them all back.

Does anyone remember the one I've thought about on and off for years and is bugging me now... A young girl is pregnant and goes in to have an abortion. When she comes out of the clinic, everyone has vanished. She eventually finds the boy she slept with and a few others, apparently the last people in the world, and they die one by one. They discover a girl from school is cursing them, and there's somethings about knitting needles which I can't remember which really bugs me! I think it turns out it was all a dream of hers while she is dying in the abortion clinic. This book has haunted/bugged me for at least 15 years.... Anyone?

thanks Lady Peter! Although I may be passed that stage now... :) and I've just had to read all the Olivia books to DD, so I've got my stage school fix...

Tim Kennemore's Changing Times is one of the wisest and funniest teenage books I've read - Wall of Words and The MIddle of The Sandwich also excellent.

Does anyone remember a YA novel about a relationship between a white girl and a Pakistani boy, she becomes pregnant and he leaves her. Her parents are supportive but she cannot keep the baby and must put her up for adoption. It was one of the saddest books I ever read and her description of her new born baby that she cannot keep is so beautiful. I often think of it but can't remember what it was called.

Just found it! It's "a sense of shame" by Jan Needle.

The cuckoo sister
The Fox in winter

Flowers in the attic etc

Malory Towers

Wow, I remember a lot of these titles, Moonwind, Second Star to the Right, Margaret Mahys, Lois Duncan's "Lost in Time"? Oh and there are other people who read those "Freshman" books too!!!

I absolutely loved Cynthia Voight's Tillerman series, I read most of those over Christmas last year - so well written, it still touched me now as an adult. And of course the definitive Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes in particular for me.

Oh and I still have a stash of SVHs that I haven't got rid of yet... wondering if / when my own twin girls would be interested in reading them :)

zebraZeebra did that trilogy have a girl whose hair was described as 3 shades of silver bronze and gold? Was one of the books called fog? Your description rings a bell.

Also loved point horror and Christopher Pike.

Lois Duncan. Stranger with my face and Summer of fear were the two that got me hooked on her.

Diana Wynne Jones. The time of the ghost was the first I read of hers. I'very read some of the books she wrote for older readers/ adults and enjoyed them too.

Francine Pascal. Not just the sweet valley stuff but she wrote some other, more Judy Blume style books - hanging out with Cici was one I remember. It was about a girl who went back in time and met her mother as a teenager.

Joan Aiken was another whose books I enjoyed. Basically anything a little bit scary or fantasy.

I was still am really angry that LJ Smith never finished her NightWorld series. I will never know how it ends.

God what a great thread. I'd forgotten all about Children of the Dust - read it when i was about 12 and it gave me nightmares for weeks!

YY to whoever said The Silver Sword and Stranger With My Face - Remember trying to learn how to astrally project after reading that...

Other favourites were:

I Went To School In The Jungle
No End to Yesterday (a proto-misery lit type read - I was obsessed with this book as a child & read it over and over again)
Sure more will come back to me as I think about it!

For anyone wanting to avoid amazon, www.abebooks.co.uk is worth a try...

Oh God. And there was another one I loved too, about a broken TV that predicts the future, can't remember what it was called though?! It featured an annoying younger brother.

Have a feeling it was written by the same writer who did Freaky Friday

LBOCS it's annoying isn't it. It should be against the law.

I remember a book that's set in the future and there's a big fence that separates the town and country. The town is all very big brother like and has lots of mod cons, where's the other side is very genteel.

Cannot for the life of me remember the plot or the name of the book.

Doodleoinkquack - I'm pretty sure the book you're talking about with the girl dying in the abortion clinic is one of Christopher Pike's books, but the name escapes me at the minute.

It is Christopher Pike, it's Whisper of Death. Geek

Kate Cann, the Collete and Art trilogy. Diving in, In the deep end and Sink or swim.

That Go Ask Alice seems really familiar and I think I read it.

I also did Z for Zachariah GCSE English 94. Bought it recently. Still as good as I remembered and began my hatred of all things nuclear.

Stranger with my face was about astral travel.

ElleBelly I borrowed the 3-books-in-1 trilogy of chainletter from the library when I was 14/15. My parents and siblings went away for the weekend leaving me alone for the very first time so I settled down for a read fest.

I didn't sleep. Once I started the first book I couldn't settle until I'd read the very last word of the very last book or I knew I'd have nightmares.

Which was the Christopher Pike book about the girl who died at a party and her ghost came back to and out who'd killed her. I remember enjoying very much and reading the sequel(s) but it(they) weren't as good. Her name was shanie or Sandi or something.

To and out = to find out