Girls' YA Fiction

[emersende]

The Girl Talk series! I've never found anyone else who remembers them. They were early-mid-nineties books with these incredibly pink covers, and every book featured a chapter in which all the four protagonists calling each other up to discuss the goings-on. I loved (and still love) these books unreasonably. Some of the books were crap, but some were pretty good- there was one in which the girls beat some guy friends of theirs in a canoe race by using a clever ruse. My personal favorite was the one in which shy Allison tutors the class bad boy, who turns out to be dyslexic, and she convinces him to get professional tutoring and then finds out that he likes her. That was kind of sweet.

And I loved some of Ellen Conford's books! We Interrupt This Semester for an Important Bulletin and Seven Days to a Brand-New Me were big favorites. I also liked Candice F. Ransom, especially the Kobie books, which must have been set in the 1960s.

[dwanollah]

What I hate most about many of these serieseses is that they usually petered out/folded and just left you hanging. Was there ever any conclusive end to Cheerleaders? Freshman Dorm? Seniors?

[iceblink]

The Canby Hall series just quit publishing all at once like that. I have had more than one dream about coming across new volumes, which is a little...odd, I know.

[satellite]

I remember first reading the Canby Hall books when I was really young, like maybe third grade. I had assumed they were in college because I didn't get the concept of a boarding school at the time.

In fifth grade I used to borrow the Babysitter's Club books from this girl who owned them all. I never really thought of going out and buying them myself. I figured she just got them every week/ month like a free magazine subscription or something.

Then I had my SVH phase. It was a huge crisis if the next book in the series was out of the library at the time.

Did anyone read the late 80s/ early 90s Nancy Drew books? I was really into those and purchased quite a few. In one of the early ones her friend Bess has entered a modeling contest that was being sabotaged and Nancy had to investigate. I remember one contestant described as having yellow (topaz?) colored eyes, and there was a lot of description of everyone's looks, dresses, and swimwear.

There was a book I liked called "The Kidnapping of Courtney van Allen and What's Her Name". This girl named Jan goes to spend the summer with her great-aunt in NYC and befriends another girl in the building who's the child of rich and famous absentee parents. The nanny and her boyfriend (who's also Courtney's psychiatrist) kidnap the rich girl and have to take along the friend since she's spending the night. They take them to his rich former silent movie star grandmother's island somewhere off Long Island and they have to figure out how to escape.

There was another series where I only got to read the first book, but I liked it, I think it was called "Cranberry Cousins". Two sisters relocate to Cranford, New Hampshire to take over a B&B after one one is widowed and the other divorced. One had lived in Chicago and has a prissy classical music fan daughter Deana, and the other had lived in SF and has a rebellious metalhead daughter, Kathy, and everyone has to learn to get along. Both girls are 15, and there was huge deal where Kathy snuck out with this guy who owned a motorcycle and her mom was very anti-motorcycle, blah, blah, blah. It was very well-written for the genre.

[kostgard]

Other than SVH, I didn't read too much YA when I was younger (I was already skipping ahead to mysteries and grossing myself out with VC Andrews novels). I read a handfull of those random teen novels with titles like "16 Love" (about a tennis player, naturally) with pictures of future celebrities on the cover, like Courteney Cox and Jeanne Triplehorn (check out gofugyourself.com for Courteney's cover).

However - does anyone remember a series of books about a set of twins (who were brunette, so no one could ever confuse them with the Wakefields), and all the titles were food-related, like "The Pink Lemonade Charade" or "The Hot Fudge Kerfuffle" or something like that?

They were sort of a cross between the Wakefields and Nancy Drew because in each book they solved some sort of mystery or pulled off some sort of caper. The only one I remember is one where they helped a Russian ballerina defect (I can't remember exactly how, but it was probably something like the girl looked enough like the twins that they passed her off as a twin, while one of the girls stayed in her place. Once they figured out that the twin wasn't the ballerina, the Russian authorities had to let her go, and she apparently got into no trouble at all for helping someone defect).

I don't even remember the twins' names, but I think their last name was Pratt. Does anyone else remember these or am I making them up?

[franticjoy]

Amazon says you're not making stuff up, kostgard!

[kostgard]

Hee! I didn't even think to look there because I was pretty sure they were out of print. I thought I'd have to check ebay or something like that, but I wasn't sure if I got the names/titles right.

Looknig down the list of book at Amazon, it is scary how much I remember about those books, and it reminded me about the one where one of the twins pulled a Just One of the Guys and went undercover as a boy so they could figure out what makes guys tick and she even found out that the nerdy/loser guy actually had a lot to offer. The twins also seemed to switch places a lot for no apparent reason, other than "because they can."

[carrier76]

I recall reading some paperbacks in junior high....as far as I knew, there were only two series...one was "Class of '88" and the other was "Class of '89." They were very sentimental as each one followed a group of friends through four books, freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year.

I read Ellen Conford. And I loved, loved LOVED "Middle School Blues" by Lou Kassem.

There was another series that I think I only read one book of, "The Stepsisters." Paige was the brunette, smart, serious one, and the evil blonde cheerleader type moved in. Lots of backstabbing and boyfriend stealing going on there. I'd read that again if I could find it.

[WestEndGirl]

satellite said:

Did anyone read the late 80s/ early 90s Nancy Drew books? I was really into those and purchased quite a few. In one of the early ones her friend Bess has entered a modeling contest that was being sabotaged and Nancy had to investigate. I remember one contestant described as having yellow (topaz?) colored eyes, and there was a lot of description of everyone's looks, dresses, and swimwear.

There was a book I liked called "The Kidnapping of Courtney van Allen and What's Her Name". This girl named Jan goes to spend the summer with her great-aunt in NYC and befriends another girl in the building who's the child of rich and famous absentee parents. The nanny and her boyfriend (who's also Courtney's psychiatrist) kidnap the rich girl and have to take along the friend since she's spending the night. They take them to his rich former silent movie star grandmother's island somewhere off Long Island and they have to figure out how to escape.

There was another series where I only got to read the first book, but I liked it, I think it was called "Cranberry Cousins". Two sisters relocate to Cranford, New Hampshire to take over a B&B after one one is widowed and the other divorced. One had lived in Chicago and has a prissy classical music fan daughter Deana, and the other had lived in SF and has a rebellious metalhead daughter, Kathy, and everyone has to learn to get along. Both girls are 15, and there was huge deal where Kathy snuck out with this guy who owned a motorcycle and her mom was very anti-motorcycle, blah, blah, blah. It was very well-written for the genre.

Oh wow, I loved the Courtney Van Allen book. Didn't the grandmother have a pet lion or tiger and they'd have to feed it hamburger?

I also remember the newer Nancy Drew series. They changed the covers to make them all glitzy, right? I think I read that one about Bess and the beauty pageant, too. I read Cranberry Cousins, too, but I forgot about it until I saw your post.

I loved Paula Danziger, even though I didn't get some of the 70s references. In "The Divorce Express," Phoebe had a batik shirt and I had no idea what that was. I also didn't get all the protest stuff in "The Cat Ate My Gymsuit" and "The Bat in Bunk Five", with the hippie-ish teacher. I really liked the book about the girl whose family goes to live on the moon, "This Place Has No Atmosphere." The main character was named Aurora and I thought she was so cool.

[satellite]

Oh wow, I loved the Courtney Van Allen book. Didn't the grandmother have a pet lion or tiger and they'd have to feed it hamburger?

Yes, you're right! She was one of those rich eccentric types and it had it's own room in her Manhattan apartment.
And Courtney would wear the same ratty outfit for weeks at a time even though she was rich, because no one really had any authority over her.

That Drew series was "The Nancy Drew Files", there were also a few Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Supermysteries crossovers at that time.

According to ebay the "Cranberry Cousins" series only lasted 6 books, I wonder what happened?