Girls' YA Fiction

[dwanollah]

Remember all those books and serieseses with the perfect, clear-skinned girl on the paperback cover and the plots revolving around school plays and cute football players and designer jeans? Discuss!

What was the general trajectory of the Canby Hall books...?

I read most of the Sweet Dreams/Wildfire/Seniors/Cheerleaders trash obsessively in 7th-10th grades, and saved my stash of 'em. Anyone else read the horrible Blossom Valley books? As an 8th grader, I knew I could write better than that!

[Deleted]

dwanollah said:

Remember all those books and serieseses with the perfect, clear-skinned girl on the paperback cover and the plots revolving around school plays and cute football players and designer jeans? Discuss!

What was the general trajectory of the Canby Hall books...?

I read most of the Sweet Dreams/Wildfire/Seniors/Cheerleaders trash obsessively in 7th-10th grades, and saved my stash of 'em. Anyone else read the horrible Blossom Valley books? As an 8th grader, I knew I could write better than that!

Well, based on the one Canby Hall book I have (warning - gross generalization ahead) - three totally different girls are thrown together and learn that, deep down, they're not really all that different.

I started reading the Sweet Dreams/First Love books in 5th grade (when I was maybe about 10) and I swear, those suckers warped my poor mind. I always felt inadequate because there was no boy wanting to go out with me. The stash got donated to the public library in one of my periodic cleaning phases. Probably for the best.

[WestEndGirl]

I loved those Cheerleaders books. I can probably even still name all the first round Cheerleaders and some of the second set (once the first set graduated and only Olivia remained). How on earth do I still remember that?

I also read a ton of horseback riding books. There was the Saddle Club series, the Lucy Somebody horseback rider/detective series, and another brief series about 3 girls with horses and fabulous lives.

[heyalice]

The YA books I've been selling lots of are the Gossip Girl series and the Louise Rennison series with the great titles: Away Laughing on a Fast Camel, Knocked Out by my Nunga-Nungas among others I can't remember right this minute.

[laconicchick]

You know, I read a ton of paperbacks in the YA section in middle and high school... And I don't remember any of them. That's sad.

[Deleted]

Some weren't too bad. Ellen Conford books were usually good for a laugh, and I used to really like YA mysteries by Joan Lowery Nixon till I realized how identical and formulaic they were, even down to the romance.

[iceblink]

I wore OUT the library's Ellen Conford collection. And Paula Danziger (RIP) too.
And my whole set of Canby Hall books is in the closet of my old bedroom at my parents' house! I sort of want them but my mom will think I've gone off the deep end if I ask her for them.

[BinkyBetsy]

Rennison's Georgia Nicolson series aggravates me to no end. Endless whining from a completely self-centered brat. It's a darn shame, because it could be good social commentary on what it's like to go to an all-girls' school in what I assume is a scrank village in the north of England (because single-sex schools are not the norm over there these days, I'm told). But it's all centered on Georgia and her self-obsession and her completely uninteresting personality. No insight into her environment, just mememewahwahwah.

[linared]

I read all of the authors; Lois Lowery, Paula Danziger, Lois Duncan, the BSC, Sweet Valley.

I also read this Christian series that my grandmother bought me, the Mandie books. Did anyone else read them? I loved them as a kid but now those books seem weird to me. As best as I can remember, Mandie was the perfect blonde girl whose father dies in the first book. She is devastated becauseshe was now alone with her nasty mother and sister. But her guy friend, who is in love with her and wants to marry when she grows (Mandie is 13 and has many suitors), finds her uncle. Of course he is totally rich and takes her in. And she finds out that her mother isn't her mother at all. What happened is that her mother is this gorgeous blonde woman who secretly married her father and got pregnant. But her parents separated them and her father left the area with the baby (I think these books were set in the 1880s). So Mandie mets her mother and she immediately loves her and there is no resentment about abandoning her for years. And then her uncle and mother get married because mom's parents are dead and really mom had the hots for both brothers at all times. So the books continue with Mandie's charmed life, having money, adoring friends, solving mysteries, finding new guys that fall in love with her. Now that I think back these books were also racist. Mandie had a Cherokee great grandfather and spent time with her Cherokee relatives. However, the writers made sure to point out that Mandie did not look like a Native American at all, and was perfect and blonde. Did anyone else read these books?

[Mutagen]

Oh boy!! Flashback time! I hope all of these qualify... if they're off topic, just let me know.

I loved The Saddle Club, but unfortunately I was growing out of YA fiction around the time I discovered that series. I remember the one with the forest fire...

Do you guys remember that series that was "created by" Walter Dean Myers, but written by other people? It was about a black girl named Sarah, her cute boyfriend Dave, and Sarah's cousin Tasha (who lived with Sarah because her parents had died in a car wreck, and who looking back seems vaguely Mary Sue-ish)? And all their friends in high school? For the LIFE of me I cannot remember the name of this series -- it was like 21 Jumpstreet or 46th Street Blues or SOMETHING with a number in the title. Whatever it was, I really liked it, and it seemed so "adult" to me back then.

I also loved the Lurlene McDaniel books... I am not one for melodrama, but throw in brain swelling or leukemia or heart transplants and I am THERE. When I look back, the premises of her books are SO melodramatic! But I was absolutely riveted to the book about the girl whose sister was in a coma, and also the one where the boy fell in love with the girl who had received his dead brother's heart. I probably learned most of what I know about cancer from those books, which is really sad.

Last but not least, I also went through a phase in which the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys crossover series was my literary crack. Didn't care for Nancy by herself, nor for the Hardys. Together? Pure cringetastic magic. Just remembering some of the plots of those novels, plus the "smoldering" attraction between Nancy and Frank, is making me laugh and bang my head against the desk at the same time.