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

200 replies

AnnabelleLee · 27/02/2014 22:49

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.

OP posts:
Doodleoinkquack · 28/02/2014 18:36

I think I read the snake girl one. I thought I had a good memory before trying to remember these books today, but obviously not. I do however remember secretly borrowing and reading all of my mum's Poldark books Blush after becoming slightly hooked on reruns of the tv series and wanting to see how it ends. BlushBlush I'm pretty sure my mum didn't realise, but it took some doing, they were big books and there were loads of them. She must've gotten her hopes up all the extra 'homework' I did for several months!

bemusedisnottheword · 28/02/2014 18:37

oh please can anyone tell me the author..Google not coming up with anything. Don't think it was Lois lowry. could be wrong.

bemusedisnottheword · 28/02/2014 18:42

oh oh I've found it. It's by Lynn Reid Banks.

RuinedAndNotorious · 28/02/2014 18:48

I've just googled, and I think the one about the possessed Aussie kid is Del-Del by Victor Kelleher. Am I brave enough to read it again, that's the question. I'd have to sleep with the light on for weeks!

DinahLady · 28/02/2014 18:53

Stranger with my Face! Well done, thats the one. grin The Eyes of Karen Connors was another one of hers.

Lois Duncan! Oh, I absolutely loved all of her stuff. Stranger with My Face was about this girl who had a double, people kept seeing her out and about places she couldn't possibly have been.
All that astral projection stuff was spooky.
Also loved her book Lost In Time too, where the main character's dad re-married - the stepmum and her children never aged. That was brilliant!

I also loved the Sweet Valley High series, Point Horror, and Judy Blume. I remember 'Forever' being particularly rude. Grin

DinahLady · 28/02/2014 19:05

Getting confused now as to whether the astral projection one I read was called Remember Me or Stranger With My Face now... aargh!

The astral projection one was DEFINITELY Stranger With My Face (was one of my absolute favourites) and I also re-bought on Amazon a couple of years ago Blush

ZebraZeebra · 28/02/2014 19:37

Oh I wish someone could name the trilogy I mentioned up thread! Someone else must have read it? Surely?

SnowyMouse · 28/02/2014 19:43

I remember something about gymnasts training in East Germany (or maybe Russia). Can't remember the title or author though.

LouSend · 28/02/2014 20:12

Zebra zeebra

I think your trilogy was fog - fire - ice.

Hang on. I'll have a look.

LouSend · 28/02/2014 20:17

Fog S

LouSend · 28/02/2014 20:17

Fog, Snow

LouSend · 28/02/2014 20:20

I'll try again...

ZebraZeebra if the books you mentioned are the trilogy I'm thinking of they are called Fog Snow and Fire by Caroline B Cooney.

I think this is them

hootloop · 28/02/2014 20:26

Brother in the land terrified me. I had to read it for GCSE aged 15 it gave me anxiety, i started having panic attacks and ended up at the doctors.
It still raises my heart beat when I think about it .

Sightoabloodyscream · 28/02/2014 20:28

Does anyone remember an kind of environmental book from the 90s? SOme bloke (biologist?) ends up on an island with magic creatures and whatnot and there are creatures that live in the coral, but they die cos of pollution.

I think I read it late 80s/early 90s. Set sort of Australiaish.

hootloop · 28/02/2014 20:31

I loved Point Romance, my favourite being a series where a young couple got married she went to college and he worked in a restaurant bar thing. Then he got cancer. I read them over and over.
I never read the point horror, all my friends did but they didn't appeal.

CaptChaos · 28/02/2014 20:35

I loved Second star to the right, it helped me to understand what was happening to me. Z for Zachariah was brilliant, if I remember right, it was made into a TV film with Anthony Andrews as Loomis, which was brilliant. I also enjoyed Kes and those make your own adventure books, there was one though, which was impossible to finish, no matter what I did, I always ended up in a loop....

I liked early Stephen King, Christine, Cujo etc, but It finished it all for me, scared the willies out of me, never read a horror since.

I am slightly embarrassed about this, but I really enjoyed sci fi fantasy series, like The Mallorean, The Belgariad, The Saga of Pliocene Exile and The Galactic Milieu. I'd never read such drivel now, of course... I have them all still, and they are totally foxed from the number of times I've reread them

fiestabelle · 28/02/2014 20:41

Walk Through Cold Fire, think the author was Cin Forshay Lunsfrd...amazing book, used to read it, then go back to the start and read it again, and repeat, can still remember the story pretty well, am off to google.

EBearhug · 01/03/2014 02:22

I still have all my Trebizon books - most of them signed. My best friend and I were allowed out of school to go down to Weymouth, where Anne Digby was at the children's book fair.

Also still reread The Changeover - and it is not unknown for me to head to the children's section in the library to see if there are any Margaret Mahy or KM Peyton titles I've not read. I was a bit in love with Pennington, and Jonathan Meredith, for different reasons.

We had Judy Blume's Forever confiscated by the headmaster when we were reading it break in the playground when we were 12. He thought the subject matter a little advanced (other Blume titles were fine.) Never caught us with Flowers in the Attic or Lace.

I reread all the Dark is Rising books about a year ago - they're still great. Loved Diana Wynne Jones, too, especially the Chrestomanci books. I think Cornelia Funke's Inkheart series remibds me of them.

Robert Westall, too, especially Devil on the Road and the Wheatstone Pond (which was a Saturday afternoon play on Radio 4 a few years ago.)

I think my mother was disappointed I didn't take to Jean Ure as she did, nor SE Hinton (though I did read them to find this out.) I also wasn't keen on Nicholas Fisk, who I think wrote A Rag, A Bone and a Hank Of Hair, which I think someone mentioned upthread. But he also wrote Grinny, which I really didn't like.

I read Wyndham (had reread a lot of them shortly after clearing my mother's house, as they were on the shelves.) John Christopher, too. Tripods was televised around 1985 or so, and as we didn't have a TV, I was allowed to go to tea at a friend's every week while the series ran, so I could see it. I also insisted on reading 1984 over Christmas in 1983 when I was 11, but I didn't really understand it - I reread it last year, and I sometimes think one of my managers is using it as a manual...

I was rereading things like Tolkien and Laura Ingalls Wilder, too, and branching into my parents' books - had a Gaskell phase at one point. And I was also moving away from exclusively fiction. I read WG Hoskins' the Making of the English Landscape when I was 16 (mostly to impress a geog student on whom I had a massive crush still do a quarter century on, he mailed me tonight.)

I discovered John Marsden when I was in Australia and now have the Tomorrow books and the Ellie Chronicles on my shelves. Haven't they recently made a film of it?

Douglas Adams, of course. Stephen King. Dean Koontz.

And Jane at the library introduced me to Mazo de la Roche, the Whiteoaks of Jalna. I was a bit in love with Renny, too.

I read pretty much anything which came my way.

I still have most of all these I've mentioned on my bookshelves, and I do reread them now and again - good comfort reads.

I think only the first SVH had been published by the time I left school, and no Point Horror or Babysitters yet (I had a Saturday job at the library, so got to shelve even more things than I read.) I did quite like the do your own adventure books, but I tried to read my way through all the options after I first got to the end, just so I'd know what I missed.

David Eddings was very popular with some girls at school, but I only read them as an adult, with a boyfriend who was a big fan.

FastWindow · 01/03/2014 15:22

I still have two of the fantasy diy adventure books. My favourite was Deathtrap Dungeon. I never did turn properly with all the rolling of dice to fight - I just won.

Let's see if anyone can help me with this story.

It was in an annual, think Bunty or Judy or Mandy type comics. It was about a young Chinese girl with three brothers, who had gone on some quest but failed and she had to do it. All terribly dangerous, she had to fight a cyclops, maybe a dragon, and I'm sure there were some eggs or pebbles with the brothers names on.

Anyone...?

EBearhug · 01/03/2014 15:25

Oooh, that rings bells, FastWindow, which means it was probably in Mandy in the early '80s.

Can't remember the name or anything, but my head says it was probably the same illustrator who did the Angel stories, about the Victorian girl who saved starving orphans.

FastWindow · 01/03/2014 15:34

Thanks ebear!

Early 80's sounds exactly right, I was about 7or 8.

I loved those illustrations, and used to try to copy them.

MrsBradfield · 01/03/2014 17:15

Did anyone read Patches? Was about a young girl who moved to Australia.

MrsBradfield · 01/03/2014 17:16

Oh and zeebrazebra the caroline b cooney trilogy is in kindle too. Great trilogy.

bamboostalks · 01/03/2014 17:32

Those puffin plus range. Jacob I have loved by Katherine Patterson was a story that stayed with me for years.

FCEK · 01/03/2014 17:54

sweet valley high

babysitters club

adrian mole