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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:
nickeldonkeybethlehemsinsight · 23/12/2010 13:45

the Divorce express was the book you're thinking of - that one's not i nthe set, but There's a bat... is the sequel.

BlitzenAndCupidsSleighDodger · 23/12/2010 13:53

Nickel, I remember the going live book reviews!

I loved Paula Danziger, may have to persuade DH to get me some books for my birthday...

BeattieBow · 23/12/2010 14:00

tribpot I remember your book about the children escaping up into the air. The boy was called Axel. Can't remember the title though.

One of my favourite books was Playing Beattie Bow! Loved it.

Also loved the Through the Barricades books.

if I mention any of these books to my dd (aged 10) she turns her nose up at them all. i get quite teary in the bookshop and shes looking at the latest vampire books.

CommanderDrool · 23/12/2010 14:11

'underground to Canada ' sorry - about the underground railway which took slaves yo freedom in Canada

Minda · 23/12/2010 14:12

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

KenDoddsDadsDogEatsTinsel · 23/12/2010 15:07

Loved Sue Barton!
And Judy Blume forever which was brought into class and dissected!

RubberDuck · 23/12/2010 15:16

I loved Come Back Lucy! One of my favourite books as a child. Also loved "The Changeover" by Margaret Mahy and "The Cats of Seroster" by Robert Westall.

Not a book, but in a comic of some kind I was getting weekly.

It was a serial about a girl and her best friend had died - she was grief stricken and stopped being friends with anyone. Turned into a real cold hearted bitch. Then she moved house/schools and there was a girl there who looked JUST like her old friend who wanted to be hers (the name Darryl rings a bell, but I couldn't swear to that). Then I moved house in real life, missed a few issues and NEVER FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENED! (I'm sure there was a happy ending due, but does anyone remember what it was?)

tribpot · 23/12/2010 15:26

Another Come Back Lucy fan, wooooo!

Rowan49 · 23/12/2010 16:58

Thanks for such a brilliant thread, I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

My favourite Jacqueline Wilson's are from the "before she was famous" era - Waiting for the Sky to Fall (which is more or less identical to Love Lessons but hey, never mind!) The Dream Palace, This Girl, Amber, The Other Side, Deep Blue and Nobody's Perfect are all excellent.

Did anyone read Julia's Mending, set in Victorian times, about a girl who is sent to stay with relatives and breaks her leg?

IvantaOuiOui · 23/12/2010 17:15

Rowan49, The Other Side was quite strange, if I remember, about a girl who was trying to escape her reality? There was another really good one called (I think) Nobody's Perfect. I was really suprised to discover the JW my daughter liked was the same one I read in the 80s.

teddies · 23/12/2010 17:28

nickel, is your shop an actual shop or an online shop?

FunnyLittleFrog · 23/12/2010 17:29

Does anyone remember the Jacqueline Wilson girl detective books called (I think) Stevie Day?

I really enjoyed The Dream Palace. That was the one about the girl who lived by the seaside and got into a relationship with a very odd older guy called Greg. I have a signed copy!

nickeldonkeybethlehemsinsight · 23/12/2010 17:30

teddies - it's an actual shop with an online element. Xmas Grin

you can email me with your request, and either phone me to pay with your card, and i will post it, or you can ask me to put it on the website (if it's not already there) then payment is done through paypal.

RustyBear · 23/12/2010 17:48

bronze - is the £500 Monica Edwards 'The Nightbird'?

I was looking for that for years till someone on MN gave me a link to Badger books - not sure if it's connected to the Jane Badger books Pretty Candles linked to, but it has more than just pony books, and I got the Nightbird there for about £14.95 I think. It seems to be out of stock at the moment, but they may have the odd copy if you contact them.

It's a republication of the original unabridged edition, published by Girls Gone By, which is a website many on this thread may find interesting, I'm surprised there hasn't been a link before (apologies if there has!)

I'll put the link to Girls Gone By in another post, as I'm on the iPad, which has a tendency to lose long posts if I switch to another page to c&p...

RustyBear · 23/12/2010 17:50

Girls Gone By they are closed till just after New Year, but well worth a browse....

girlafraid · 23/12/2010 17:51

Brilliant thread - so many memories

I loved Please Don't Go by Peggy Woodford. Fabulous french setting complete with hunky and dangerous older man and then tragic youthful love story.

The Dark is Rising sequence by ??? made me love fantasy

SnowWoman · 23/12/2010 17:57

LittleRedDragon - I think your boy down the tin mine was The Fate of Jeremy Visick by David Wiseman, I enjoyed reading that one too.

Does anyone else remember reading The Drowners by Garry Kilworth, about the fens and how the rivers and marshes were controlled? I think it had a ghost element as well.

llareggub · 23/12/2010 17:59

girlafraid - Susan Cooper wrote The Dark is Rising and I named my oldest son after one of the boys in Over Sea, Under Stone.

tribpot · 23/12/2010 18:01

girlafraid - Susan Cooper. Genius. We read The Grey King in school and I was blown away.

SnowWoman thanks for reminding me of the name of Sun Horse, Moon Horse. What a story.

scouserabroad · 23/12/2010 18:41

Georginaworsley, the book about the Jewish girls in wartime Holland was The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss. It was autobiographical I think. I first read it in primary school, then later as a teenager & realised there were little subplots in it which had totally passed over my head the first time I read it!

scouserabroad · 23/12/2010 18:44

Oh and does anyone remember a book about a black brother & sister in pre-apartheid South Africa, who lived with their Grandma & walked to Johannesburg to find their Mum? We read that in school just when apartheid ended.

scouserabroad · 23/12/2010 18:45

pre-apartheid? I meant apartheid, d'oh!

allnightlong · 23/12/2010 18:51

Forever by Judy Blume all my teenage sex education came from this book. I can't remember the boys name but I can remember he had ginger pubes. Blush

FunnyLittleFrog · 23/12/2010 19:08

Gosh, The Cuckoo Sister! Had forgotten that one but it was a favourite for a while. Would love to read it again.

Love this thread!

BellaBearisWideAwake · 23/12/2010 19:33

and his willy was called ralph!

nickel - thanks, I remember reading all of those PD books.

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