Can I start a thread about nostalgic Young Adult/Children's books we used to read in the 80s/90s?

[guineaholic11]

I love going to second hand bookshops or charity shops and browsing the children's sections to see if I can spot any books I used to love reading then?

I used to love anything by Jean Ure, (anyone remember the Peter High school series she wrote?) Anne Digby's Trebizon series, Noel Streatfield, Antonia Forrest's school books with the Marlowes, and endless pony books by Patricia Leitch (anyone remember Jinny and her Arab horse Shantih?) Also went through a serious Sweet Valley phase...goodness knows why, looking back those books were full of fat shaming and bitchiness!

Great thread! I loved:

Lois Duncan (Summer I’d Fear, Stranger With My Face etc)
Lois Lowry (the Anastasia books)
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B Cooney
Trebizon (not a patch on Antonia Forest though)
I Was a Teenage Worrier by Ros Asquith
On a similar note, Diary of A Teenage Health Freak by (I think) Aidan McFarlane
Christopher Pike
Not Dressed Like That, You Don’t! by Yvonne Coppard

And of course the mighty Sweet Valley High!

Oh, and anything by Jean Ure, Anne Fine and Tim Kennemore...

@aaahhhBump, I've never met anyone else who loved Blood and Chocolate before.

Most of my favourites have been mentioned, but I have a special fondness for Playing Beattie Bow, Fire and Hemlock, the Lark and Laurel series and See you Thursday. I loved the Pennington books, which I think we're by the same author as the Flambards books. I really liked Play Nimrod For Him by Jean Ure, too. Adrian Mole, obviously, and Mary Renault. And my more obscure favourite is a wonderful teen romance called Remembrance of the Sun by Kate Gilmore about an American girl living in Iran who falls in love with an Iranian boy just before the revolution. I learned so much from that book. And there was a book called Julie of the Wolves, and the Tillerman books by Cynthia Voigt.

Oh, and Summer of My German Soldier. We read it in school, and years later pretty much all of my A-level English class confessed to a crush on the German soldier.

Playing Beattie Bow is a fabulous book - such an accurate description in it of being a teenager in love (also I love time-slip stories).

Fire and Hemlock may be in my all time top 10 favourite books.

As a child it was all pony books like Jill's Gymkhana and a series by Josephine Pullein-Thompson about a pony club who had uncontrollable horses and were looked down on by a neighbouring Pony Club. Then they got a new instructor who had been injured somehow, maybe in the war and taught them how to handle their horses. Can't remember the name of the books at all now.
Then it was Judy Blume, Paula Danziger and Sweet Valley High. I thought all teenagers had a phone in their bedroom,had an endless supply of money to go to the mall/cinema/diner with their friends and got given a car when they were 16.Reality was an eye-opener!!!

Love this thread! I loved Point Horror and also Christopher Pike, who basically wrote very similar stuff.

Oh and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole!

These bad boys - I was obsessed

Another Point horror fan, I remember liking the Babysitter series and most of the other RL Stine ones.

My absolute favourite books were A Summer to Die, Lois Lowry, a Christmas present one year from my mum. And There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom, Louis Sachar, a present from my mum’s friend for a long flight. I think they’re both still in her loft somewhere. I remember both of those being popular when I brought them in for our year 6 book swap.

I do like the Nancy Drew books (unsurprisingly!).
Sweet valley high / twins / university.

I loved the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary.

Also, Paula Danziger. She visited our local library and did a talk to my class. It was the highlight of our school social diary . I just googled her and can't believe she died years ago . Lovely, charismatic, funny woman.

Judy Blume was BIG in my junior school years. She was the Queen.

Absolutely loved Sweet Valley High, too. The descriptions of their outfits ('Jessica put on her favourite leather pants, an olive green turtle neck and her new frosted peach lipstick') seemed so grown up and exotic to a 10 yr old me .

I went through a dodgy stage in my early teens of loving Jackie and Joan Collins, and the Flowers in the Attic series .

School stories - Malory Towers/St Clare's/Trebizon/Naughtiest girl (still have them all)
Judy Blume, Nancy Drew and Hardy boys, Sweet Valley, Paula Danziger
Redwall/Mossflower & Mattimeo
Gymnast Gilly
Christopher Pike. Point Fear?
Flowers in the attic
Later on babysitters club even though i was a bit old. My friend's sister had them.
Can't believe how much I read as a child!

Oh, I loved the Tillerman books by Cynthia Voigt too! And Lois Duncan, and the Anastasia books. Fire and Hemlock is one of my favourite books.

There's a really good book called Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick, which is a collection of her blog posts about YA books of the 70s and 80s. Brought back lots of memories!

Also Tamora Pierce. I gave the first Alanna book to DD to read last year, and she's read every single Tamora Pierce book at least twice since then.

Muddling I remember my brother being a big Redwall fan and helping him write a letter to Brian Jacques. He was so excited when he got a reply, there were some Redwall recipes sent to him too which my mum has in her recipe folder still.

This thread is making me realise her hoarding tendencies.

The Kevin and Sadie series and the Maggie series by Joan Lingard.
The Sweet Dreams books.
Chalet School (I have since collected quite a few which I re-read).
Sue Barton nurse books.
Break in the Sun by Bernard Ashley.
New Patches For Old by Christobel Mattingley

Love this thread! I wasn't horsey but I loved "I Wrote a Pony Book" by Joanna Cannan, the mother of the Pullein-Thompson sisters (which is quite meta, in retrospect).

I used to live a book about a girl called something like Marni or Charley who ran away from home and lived in the field behind her house. I wish I could remember what it was called - I read it time and time again.

But also: Flowers In The Attic, Sweet Valley High, The Outsiders (I cried and cried!) and Judy Blume.

Oooh yes. I loved Joan Aiken, she wrote a lot of sinister stories. Does anyone remember one about a girl who found she could do astral projection but then her twin sister stole her body? I think that was Aiken.

I loved Beauty by Robin McKinley who coincidentally was married to Peter Dickinson. He died fairly recently. I've since picked some more of her books and they hold up really well.

Margaret Mahy - the Changeover and the Haunting - both awesome.
Penelope Lively - the Ghost of Thomas Kempe (I loved all the spooky ones, can you tell??)
Alison Uttley, A Traveller in Time
Empty World - a v. terrifying post apocalyptic one.
My favouritist book ever was something called The Awakening Water - another sci fi one by G.R. Kesteven. Loved I am David too. It was the one with this cover which was very evocative.

Oh wait, no, I think it must have been this one!

ohh i adored Playing Beattie Bow.

and Harriet the Spy, and Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume, and Pardon Me You’re Stepping on My Eyeball. Brother in the Land (which had a drawing of Ant from Grange Hill on the cover), It and everything else Stephen King has written.

does nobody remember Forever by Judy Blume doing the rounds? Ralph and a bath mat - what a lovely image..

I am 42 and still can't bring myself to think too hard about Brother in the Land because it was so terrifying and upsetting.

The Belgariad!

I must root them out.