What classic book did you live when you were 13?

[Mardyface]

Hello!

Our family does a thing where we recommend a book we think someone else would like and then we rate it. It's my turn to recommend for my 13 yr old.

I'm trying to remember what I read and loved at 13. There are loads of brilliant YA books around but I think it should be one she wouldn't have come across or thought of for this exercise, and not necessarily a book aimed at children.

I've thought of Little Women and Anne of Green Gables but I know there must be loads more suitable ones!

Thanks in advance!

How did I forget about the Katy books @stormelf ?! I loved them so much.

Rebecca - I read it 22 times that year! I was a bit obsessive.

but I wonder if she could cope with a bit of John Wyndham

Why would she not? I’m certain before YA happened most readerly teens (including me) consumed vast quantities of sci fi and fantasy - and JW was the gateway to all the rest!

Watership Down for me too. I'm in my 50's and still remember where I was when I read the last pages at around 13 years old

Definitely I Capture The Castle.
I loved Ursula Le Guin at that age, particularly The Tombs of Atuan.
Also adored The Dark is Rising trilogy, although probably out of print now.

I worry that our kids spend too much time on the internet to experience these golden reading years (but suspect our parents felt the same about telly). It's really lovely to hear about everybody else's favourites.

I was that age when I read Pride & Prejudice for the first time, and loved it!

@SuffolkBargeWoman I reread the Dark is Rising trilogy recently! It's still in print. I loved it too, esp Over Sea Under Stone.

@TottersBlankly you're right. I always find his stuff reeeeeeeeally creepy but that's certainly no reason not to recommend it!

Gone with the Wind
Anne of Green Gables
Little House in the Prairie

@ElizabethinherGermanGarden I love the fact you counted as well!

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn - Betty Smith

Little House, Little Women, read a LOT of Dickens around that age, and Flora Thompson, Mary Stewart, Jean Plaidy, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Nancy Mitford.

Jane Eyre of course and Robin McKinley's books - Beauty, the Blue Sword, Sunshine.... all brilliant

I was really into Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes. Also Sci fi- Wyndham, Asimov, Ray Bradbury

I loved the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, Agatha Christie and Anne of Green Gables plus various Judy Blume ones.

Black Beauty

I read a lot of Gerald Durrell at that age too.

Great list. My daughter is 12 and loves many of the books already mentioned.

I will add my own suggestions when I think of them but just wanted to mention that while I also loved Sophie's world when I was younger, unfortunately Jostein Gaarder turned out to be virulently antisemitic, so I won't be giving it to my kids 😥

I am aware that there is a slight hypocrisy in that we all still read and enjoy Roald Dahl, but somehow that feels different, maybe because he died so many years ago, or maybe it's just that I think his books are too good not to read...

The Time and Space of Uncle Albert is a fab fictional book about quantum physics and relativity. Just remembered that

Also, don't think anyone has mentioned Diana Wynne Jones or Margaret Mahy - both brilliant.

I would recommend (DWJ) Fire and hemlock, the time of the ghost, and archer's goon

(MM) The changeover, the tricksters, the catalogue of the universe

I've just checked my bookcase and I've only got two of my old copies left. Need to buy What Katy did at school so my kids can read them. Loved those books

I loved (& still love) historical & detective fiction

Nora Lofts House books, Sharon Penman 'Sunne in Splendour' & Josephine Tay's 'Daughter of Time' (both on Richard III).

Dorothy L Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.

Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - either book or radio (but not TV or movie versions).

The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden. I still have it and I am ooollldddd!

I'm 61 and when I was in my teens there was no publishing category called Young Adult. There were children's books and as we outgrew those we went straight onto adult books, as I recall. I read voraciously as a child and teenager (no internet! how lucky we were). Here are some I remember from roughly that time.

My Family and Other Animals - we read that as a set book in what you'd now call year 7 and I loved it.

I saw the brilliant 1974 film of Murder on the Orient Express in the cinema not long after it was released and that was one of the things that got me reading Agatha Christie. I would strongly recommend The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express as (arguably) her three best books.

Read Jane Eyre as a set book at school around then, and probably Wuthering Heights not long after. I read several Dickens novels as a child and young teenager. I'd read The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins a year or two earlier and loved it. (I love Victorian fiction, but I know not all adults share my taste there, never mind teenagers.)

The one book I distinctly remember reading then because there was an excellent TV adaptation around that time is South Riding by Winifred Holtby, which remains one of my all-time favourite novels. Quite long, but not a difficult read.

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. Great time travelling-y mystery.

Moondial by Helen Cresswell. Not sure if counts as a classic but it's pretty old now and still excellent. Inspired by Belton House (NT) in Lincs and filmed by BBC so you can even visit the 'set'.

Thank you! I haven't decided what my recommendation will be yet - probably John Wyndham- but this has been really useful. Lots of Xmas present ideas!