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Children's books

Join in for children's book recommendations.

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

341 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:
PrettyCandlesAndTinselToo · 22/12/2010 20:19

this website

Monkeytoo · 22/12/2010 20:28

Gaffataperules - are you talking about the Sue Barton books? My sister used to love those - they were called things like 'District Nurse' I think?

I remember Easy Connections - I loved that book.

When I was pre-teen I remember reading and loving 'Goodnight Mister Tom' which was brilliant!

Monkeytoo · 22/12/2010 20:29

Ooh and Fly By Night...

CommanderDrool · 22/12/2010 20:30

Does anyone know a boom where a girl drinks a bottle of gin and runs a really hot bath to induce a miscarriage ? Yes this was a book in our school library.

Does anyone remember ' Summer of My German Soldier' and 'Roll if Thunder Hear My Cry' and 'The Endless Steppe ' where a girl and her mother are sent to Siberia?

CommanderDrool · 22/12/2010 20:35

A boom? A book bloody iphone

CommanderDrool · 22/12/2010 20:37

I loved Fly By Night and The Team , and also Flambardswas fin although a bit blood thirsty on the fox hunting front

FessaEst · 22/12/2010 20:39

We did the Endless Steppe, the cover was green and white. We did it in drama too and had to pretend to be marching across the Steppe!

peggotty · 22/12/2010 20:40

OOh I was just about to post about 'Summer of My german Soldier'! I loved it so much and had a real crush on Anton, the german soldier. Fantastic book.

tribpot · 22/12/2010 20:42

suzikettles - I was going to post to see if anyone remembered Heartsease, but now I think that was the first book in the Change trilogy?

The Silver Sword is genius, definitely.

Does anyone remember the book about the making of a chalk horse by Rosemary Sutcliffe? Still haven't really recovered from the ending.

Coldtits, I definitely remember that post-apocalypse book, she teams up with a boy and they both climb up and up till they're able to escape into the supposedly unbreathable air. It feels like a Nicholas Fisk but I don't think it is. That one's really going to bug me! Talking of unbreathable air, let's not forget the dear old Tripods.

Commander - they try the hot bath and gin trick in Lace, but surely your library wouldn't have had this in stock?!

PigeonPie · 22/12/2010 20:44

coldtits, was yours Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere? It was televised a number of years ago.

scouserabroad · 22/12/2010 20:45

Commanderdrool, the book about the girl trying to induce the miscarriage might have been Saturday night / Sunday morning by Alan Silitoe? I read it when I was a teenager can't remember where I found it, it had quite an adult storyline IIRC.

barbarapym · 22/12/2010 20:45

Love this thread! Waiting for the Sky to fall was brilliant - I read it at 14. Still think about it occasionally now, although I didn't realise it was by Jacqueline Wilson - she wasn't quite so famous then, obviously.

Does anyone remember a book where a girls's parents have been killed in a car crash and she goes to live with her bohemian aunt in Edinburgh Old Town? She's very buttoned up and prim, but gradually gets used to the bohemia, and the aunt meets her half way by painting her bedroom and being a bit more organised. I think she was called Emma, and there might have been a sequel called Emma in Love?

Bilgewater ( Jane Gardam) was fantastic too. I came across it again the other day and wasn't disappointed. I still have a massive crush on Terrapin...

Monkeytoo · 22/12/2010 20:46

Oh and also Tom's Midnight Garden and Minnow on the Say

scouserabroad · 22/12/2010 20:48

Re Rosemary Sutcliff, has anyone else ever read Flame coloured taffeta? It's about a girl who helps a pirate / smuggler / dodgy bloke when he gets shot.

tribpot · 22/12/2010 20:48

Barbara, you're not thinking about Gemma in Love, are you? The appallingly re-titled Goodbye Gemma by the goddess that is Noel Streatfeild.

Btw, does anyone remember Come Back Lucy, where the girl slips between modern day and Victorian England? She's been brought up by a very old-fashioned aunt, who dies, and is then sent to live with a modern family who do outrageous stuff like eat fish'n'chips in the street. She breaks her hand on a glass ... don't know why I remember that bit.

BertieBasset · 22/12/2010 20:49

Yes I remember roll of thunder, hear my cry!

Does anyone remember another nuclear fall out book about 2 brothers. the mum dies in the bomb, and they own a grocer's shop. The dad is then killed for keeping the goods back for neighbours and friends. The eldest brother meets a girl at a drinking well, and they get together, and move to a type of commune. It ends with them saving the youngest brother from cannibals, only for him to die from radiation poisoning.

Ringing any bells?

CommanderDrool · 22/12/2010 20:50

Oh it may have have been Alan Silitoe - I remember finding the whole book rather bemusing!

Lace wasn't in out school library but there was a well thumbed copy passed around at sleepovers. And you could never get hold of a copy of Forever.

CommanderDrool · 22/12/2010 20:53

Actually I loved The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

PenguinFeet1 · 22/12/2010 20:54

Commander, the gin drinking pregnant girl may have been in The L Shaped Room. Sounds familiar but not 100% sure!

barbarapym · 22/12/2010 20:56

Tribpot - no, I don't think so, but having googled Gemma in Love it looks like one to investigate anyway!

I have given ds The Ogre Downstairs and The Ghost of Thomas Kempe recently - mostly so I could re-read them.

dyzzidi · 22/12/2010 20:58

another vote for z for Zachariah here! I also vividly remember spring and port wine. I seem to remember it being a bout a family who were arguing because one of them wouldn't eat a herring for tea.

Also Adams Ark about a school group visiting a nuclear bunker when a bomb is dropped and the group staying there although they shouldn't as it is meant for the PM. On e of the girls gets pregnant by one of the lads and he sneaks out into the town and gets her tinned peaches.

I liked the anastasia ones and loved Sweet Valley High and Christopher Pike horror books.

tribpot · 22/12/2010 20:59

Barbara, have you never read the Gemma series? Well worth it, even though not La Streatfeild (Ballet Shoes) at her peak.

I remember The Ghost of Thomas Kempe but literally nothing about it.

I've now got 'Iron Lily' in my mind - girl runs weaving mill? Sort of Woman of Substance for teens?

Udderly · 22/12/2010 21:00

Coldtits, its This Time of Darkness, I think I still have it gathering dust somewhere!

scouserabroad · 22/12/2010 21:01

OMG the Ghost of Thomas Kempe we did that in English but I haven't a clue what the story is anymore. I'm sure we must have spent hours analysing it too!

Feenie · 22/12/2010 21:02

Gin drinking pregnant girl was It's My Life by Robert Leeson - her mum runs off with another bloke, and her dad expects her to help him bring up her little brother and cope with being a teenage girl, etc. I think her period was just very late in the end, she wasn't pregnant.

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