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Here’s some recommendations for common likes of tween and teen boys. There’s ones suggested for 6^th-8^th (age 11-15) and some for 9^th (age 15+) and above. Ones with a * next to the title will probably be able to pass the “great literature test” and not be shot down by overly picky parents. These are either considered great literature or have won an award. I’ve tried to leave off one’s that are GLARINGLY OBVIOUS like Harry Potter, Hardy Boys, Stephen King, or anything I’ve seen appear repeatedly on a ‘required reading’ list that nobody reads unless it’s assigned. They’ve already either read those, or will be forced to read them in school. I have picked some out of print items, but they’re generally one’s I’ve had pass through my hands repeatedly. If you handle used books, you may have some on hand right now.

The split at 6^th/9^th is based either on language level OR sexual/violent content. Some are put into the ‘higher’ grade level because they are more enjoyable if you have a broader literary background first. There’s also a few comic series recommended. They’re clearly marked. Comics may be a good way to lure reluctant readers in. Most items recommended for 6^th graders also work for higher grades (or adults!) Items marked with {brackets} are anthologies or collections, for the harried teens.

Animals:

6^th grade: The dog always dies in teen lit. It gets depressing. Try Burnford’s “The Incredible Journey”*, Saunder’s “Beautiful Joe”*, or Sewell’s “Black Beauty”*. Happy endings! Also try Kipling’s “Jungle Books*,”{Anything by James Herriott}, Brian Jacques’ Redwall series, Robin Jarvis’ Deptford Mice trilogy, Richard Adam’s “Watership Down”, and Sterling North’s “Rascal”.

9^th grade: Farley Mowat’s “Never Cry Wolf”, Gavin Maxwell’s “Ring of Bright Water”*, Richard Adam’s “Plague Dogs” (warning, somewhat sad!), most Stephen Jay Gould, Vaughan’s “Pride of Baghdad” (comic)

Art:

6^th grade: Many Japanese manga series. Look for items labeled as Shonen manga (boys comics). American comic series such as marvel “Runaways”, “Blue Beetle: Shellshocked”, or the “Showcase Presents: X” which collect comics from the 1940-60s. “How to Draw X” may work well.

9^{th grade:} Irving Stone’s “Agony and the Ecstacy”* & “Dear Theo”*, Dan Brown’s “da Vinci Code”, more advanced “how to…” books

Computers/Videogames/Science-

6^th grade: Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” (and sequels). Most video game series will have tie in books. {anthology: “Ants, Indians, and Little Dinosaurs”*}, Robert Blane’s Rick Brant Electronic Adventures series (like the Hardy Boys, but with science)

9^th grade: as above, plus Dan Brown’s “Digital Fortress”, anything by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, most books by Michael Crichton, {anything by Stephen Jay Gould*}

History:

6^th grade: Louis L’Amour (there’s more than just westerns!), Collier’s “My Brother Sam is Dead”, Nordhoff’s “Mutiny on the Bounty”*, Agatha Christie’s “Death Comes as the End”, Spiegelman’s “Maus”* (comic- Pulitzer prize winner about the Holocaust), Gonick’s “The Cartoon History of the United States” & “The Cartoon History of the Universe” (comic), {Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series}

9^{th grade}: Shilt’s “And the Band Played On” (modern history of AIDS), Neville’s “The Eight”, Yarbro’s St. Germaine series (historical vampire), Evan’s “Longarm” series, Sacco’s “Palestine”* & “Safe Area Gorazade” (comic-award winner ), Vaughan’s “Pride of Baghdad”(comic- current Iraq war) , Moore’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentleman” (comic- 19^th century), O’Neill’s “Green Lantern/Green Arrow Collection volume 1” (comic- civil rights era)

Outdoors/Survival:

6^th grade: Gary Paulson- Hatchet* and Brian’s Winter, Graham’s “Dove”, Thor Heyerdahl’s “Kon-Tiki”& his other books. Many books in the ‘animals’ recommendations will also work.

9^th grade: John Krakuer’s “Into Thin Air” & “Into the Wild”*, Read’s “Alive”, Louis L’Amour’s “Last of the Breed”, anything by James Fenimore Cooper*, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe*

Sports:

6^th grade- anything by Matt Christopher or Thomas Dygard, name a sport, those two have probably written a book about it. Voight’s “The Runner” (running), Brancato’s “Winning” (American football)

9^th grade- Bissinger- “Friday Night Lights” (American football), Goodwin’s “Wait Til Next Year” (baseball), Hornby “Fever Pitch” (soccer/football), Kinsella’s {“The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt”} and “Shoeless Joe” (baseball), most sports biographies

Science fiction/fantasy/horror

6^th grade: anything by RL Stine, Clive Barker’s “Thief of Always”, Alan Dean Foster’s “Spellsinger” series, anything by C.S. Lewis, anything by Ursula LeGuin but Wizard of Earth Sea is recommended, anything by John Saul, Smith’s “Shazam and the Monster Society of Evil” (comic), Willingham’s “Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall” (comic)

9^th grade: Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonriders of Pern” series, C.J. Cherryh’s “Cuckoo’s Egg” & Chanur series, T.H. White’s “Once and Future King”, {any of the annual Hugo or Nebula Award anthologies}*, Robert McCammon’s “Mystery Walk”

Mystery & Thriller

6^th grade: anything by Agatha Christie, anything Earle Stanley Gardner, Arthur’s “Three Investigators Series”, various TV show tie ins such as for Law & Order and CSI, {Alfred Hitchcock Presents series}

9^th grade and up: Puzo’s “The Godfather”, Clavell “Shogun”, anything by Alistair Maclean, anything by Wilbur Smith, the Mack Bolan series, The Destroyer series

Rainy Day Paperback Exchange
Bethel, CT
gently used books for kids and adults
http://www.rainydaypaperback.com

With Dan Brown’s next book due out soon we’ve had a couple of discussions in our book shop about the values of books by Dan Brown. Unlike some authors that find a way to put out a couple of books every year, Dan Brown is considerably less prolific. He has published only four books in his 12 year career. What I would love to know is any print run information on books by Dan Brown. We then want to do a little analysis on the current First Edition values in relation to the print runs. Any info can be left in the comments section and will be greatly appreciated. I will incorporate it into the post. If this proves interesting we will try and repeat the exercise with a few other authors.

Books by Dan Brown

NOVELS
Digital Fortress - St. Martins Press (1996)
Deception Point - Pocket Books (2001)

ROBERT LANGTON SERIES
Angels and Demons - Pocket Books (2000)
The Da Vinci Code  -  Doubleday (2003)

And of course Dan Browns next book is called The Solomon Key, another Da Vinci code type thriller featuring Robert Langdon. The story supposedly revolves around the Freemasons and the Founding Fathers.

The early 20th Century saw the first of what can be considered the modern children’s picture book. The books were short, the words relatively few, and the illustrations advanced the story instead of merely illustrating the text. Whether it was Peter Rabbit squeezing himself under Mr. McGregor’s fence or poor Pooh being thumped on the stairs by Christopher Robin, the best of these books also reflected a change of viewpoint: the change from the vantage point of an adult to more of a child’s eye view of the world.

While it’s fairly easy to identify and value the children’s classics like Peter Rabbit or Winnie the Pooh and the ALA website is a good resource for Caldecott Award and Caldecott Honor Books, there are a large number of modern children’s illustrated books which are widely sought that can’t be quantified in terms of edition or merits of the art and text. These books are not usually being sought by traditional book collectors, they are being sought by non collectors looking to revisit, and usually pass on, a specific childhood moment. The one thing that is almost impossible to predict with children’s books is which books will resonate enough in a persons childhood to make it sought, sometimes frantically, when that person becomes and adult.

These books are in such demand, that even after 15 years as a children’s bookseller, I rarely, if ever, have handled any copies. The advent of the internet has made tracking down these books somewhat easier but that fact is usually offset by the large number of non traditional collectors looking for these titles. Two examples of books that I’ve had multiple requests for over that years, and that I’ve never had a copy of are: The Boy Who Ate Flowers by Nancy Sherman and illustrated by Nancy Carroll, and The Christmas Cookie Sprinkle Snitcher written by Robert Krauss and Illustrated by VIP.

And the conversation which is most dreaded by all out of print children’s booksellers everywhere usually starts with; “I’m looking for this book I had when I was little, I don’t remember the title or the author…..”

I wrote the following on my rants and rambles blog after an especially difficult day of hunting for unnamed books, (and probably after one too many glasses of wine).
A compendium:
“I remember a book I had when I was 4 or 5 or maybe 6
It was blue or green or maybe yellow
And had a picture of a duck or frog or puppy dog
The duck was lost but found his way home
The frog was bad but her family loved her anyway
And the puppy was hardly ever afraid of the dark or being alone
It’s gone now, lost when we moved
or in the basement flood of ‘78
or the garage sale the year I left for college…

That’s the book I want to buy, do you have it?”

Posted By Dana Richardson of Windy Hill Books

A Little Bit on Little Golden Books

In 1942 Simon and Schuster published the first dozen titles in Little Golden Books (LGB) series. They were priced at about 25 cents, marketed to department stores, and as an alternative to the more expensive children’s books, which at the time cost 2 to 3 dollars, were immediately popular.

There are collectors that passionately collect LGB, and I’ve discovered to my disappointment that the Little Golden Book collectors, like series book collectors, are not really interested in collecting outside of their area of interest. However there are some authors and even more illustrators that were published by Little Golden Books that went on to gain more mainstream popularity. There are non LGB collectors that are looking for the LGB publications by their favorite author or illustrator.

So no matter whether it is an out of print bookstore or a booth at an antique mall, I always take the time to go through the stacks of LGB to look for the following authors and illustrators:

• Margaret Wise Brown of Good Night Moon fame published 6 or so LGB
• Garth Williams the illustrator of Charlotte’s Web, illustrated many LGB
• Elizabeth Orton Jones, who won the 1945 Caldecott has at least one LGB
• Alice and Martin Provensen (illus and later authors) Caldecott and Newbury Award Winners!
• Charlotte Zolotow (author)
• Feodor Rojankovsky (illus)
• Leonard Wiesgard (illus)
• Trina Schart (Hyman) (illus)
• Clement Hurd (illus)

This checklist is by no means complete and is most definitely not definitive; there are collected authors and illustrators that I know I’ve missed. Also not included are the illustrators, most notably Eloise Wilkin, who did primarily LGB illustrations. This is just a quick list generally made up of illustrators or authors that I have non LGB collectors looking for.

by Dana Richardson of Windy Hill Books| more of Dana’s articles can be seen here

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Last week David D. Perlmutter, a professor in the KU School of Journalism & Mass Communications, and author of Blogwars, took a look at whether book authors should blog. This week he investigates the influence of bloggers on “the people.” Be on the lookout for Blogwars which examines the rapidly burgeoning phenomenon of blogs and questions the degree to which blog influence–or fail to influence–American political life. Read Perlmutter’s other OUPblog posts here.

In Blogwars I compile much survey data that shows that people who blog about politics, as well as the readers and commenters—interactors—of political blogs, are not “the people.” That is, they are not a true cross-section of America: They tend to be male, white, upper income, higher education. But even if blogs are not vox populi, it does not follow that, as blog critics love to taunt, bloggers are the tinfoil-hatters of American political life. To the contrary, while bloggers may not be the people, there is growing evidence that they have an extraordinary and extra-proportional effect on the people, and on politics, campaigns and elections, public affairs, policy-making, press agendas and coverage, and public opinion. (more…)

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The Surgeon General, Fortune 500 CEO’s, Politicians and Bono - powerful people that seem to exist in a different world with different rules. So how do they include their faith in their sometimes cut-throat professional worlds? In the second podcast from our interview with Michael Lindsay, he shares his interviewee’s takes on subjects ranging from medical ethics to making underwear ads less promiscuous - and finally lets us in on the strategy that is making the Evangelicals so successful in their rise to positions of power. The transcript of the audio is after the jump.

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This week's post was hard for me because I really didn't read a lot outside of school during my teen years, but I read voraciously (read: consumed) tons of books in elementary and middle school. So my diplomatic choice is to present a handful of the books that were most meaningful to me when I was younger...

#1. FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER by E. L. Konigsburg. [Newberry Medal Winner, 1968] I think the fact that I can remember the entire title (spelling included) without having to look it up speaks to how much I loved this book. It's about a girl and her younger brother who decide to run away... to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in NYC). The adventure begins with them standing on toilet seats to avoid detection of the security guard and they manage to stay in the museum for a week, studying the exhibits and becoming fascinated with one in particular. The true quest begins as they try to determine the mysterious origins of the "angel" statue, ultimately digging through the files of the its former owner, none other that Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I remember being so in love with the idea of running away to a museum and finding a mystery to solve once there.

#2. THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin. [Newberry Medal Winner, 1979] Another mystery/puzzle book. This one is an absolute classic. The sixteen residents of Sunset Towers apartments in Chicago are paired up and sent on a quest to solve the mystery and win Sam Westing's fortune. Crazy characters, clues, puzzles, and a lovable heroine. I love a good mystery, and it's probably because this book meant so much to me. Can I tell you how excited I am to be published by the same house that published this? Who could have known when I first read this book like twenty years ago (omg I'm getting old) that I'd be sorta among it's future ranks? It's gotta be fate. (On Amazon, this book has 709 reviews with an average of 4.5 stars. Now that's a winner.)

#3. THE EGYPT GAME by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. [Newberry Honor Book, 1968] This is my most obscure favorite. I swear, if not for the Scholastic catalog, I would be severely less well read than I am. Anyway, this is the book the dove me head first into ancient cultures. It's about a group of kids who get enthralled with ancient Egypt and start an elaborate make-believe world that recreates that past. There's also a mystery (duh, right?) and plenty of Egyptian mythology. After reading this book I became obsessed with ancient Egypt. I bought books about it, tried to learn hieroglyphics (ha), and ultimately this love of ancient culture spread into other cultures... like ancient Greece. Which definitely influence my own writing career, since much of my book relates to Greece myth. It's amazing, when you think about, how the most seemingly insignificant thing (like picking a book out of the Scholastic catalog) can change a person's entire life. (Oh, and this one was set in California, so I have the East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast covered in my selections!)

Hugs,
TLC
[The Book Without a Title], Summer 2008 Dutton Children's Books

what I'm reading ... THE STAND by Stephen King (finally broke down and bought the uncut edition, sigh...)

This week, we're talking about teen books that had a profound impact on us growing up. A book that might have influenced us to become writers. For me, this one's a no-brainer.

Sure, I read all of the Little House on the Prairie books and Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan, Little Women, Frog and Toad Are Friends (what?!)...they were all fantastic. However, they were just wonderful, creative stories that I enjoyed reading. They didn't spur me to pick up pen and paper and begin crafting myself.

Until I read The Parent Trap. This book came out in 1968 (I know...a lifetime ago) by Vic Crume when following the 1961 Disney movie starring the ever-charming Hayley Mills (no...not Lindsey Lohan's version) playing the duel roles of Sharon and Susan, twins separated after birth when their parents divorced and went their separate ways.



Now, it wasn't particularly the plot of the book that I identified with -- seeing how I don't have a twin sister I was separated from or divorced parents (mine just celebrated their 52nd wedding anniversary.) Rather, it was the whole atmosphere and setting and...what if factor that the story created. And, the fact that these two thirteen year old girls could swap lives and manage to bring their parents back together.



When I was younger, I read this book to death, cover to cover, several times over. The thing was so tattered and torn, it looked like it had been through a shredder. At some point, I re-wrote the story in screenplay form in a notebook. I would have my stuffed animals act it out as a "play" with various set of animal twins playing the roles of Susan and Sharon. Sometimes, I'd even switch up the plot a little bit, ad-libbing here and there. I couldn't get enough of it, somehow wanting the story to be part of me, to have created it.

It wasn't novel-writing, at that point, but it was writing. I mean, I was like nine years old. But, it was a seed that was planted and set to grow and develop...until one day I'd be lucky enough to sell one of my stories.

So the rest of the Buzz Girls will weigh in this week on the books that influenced them. We'd love to hear from you and find out what books have meant the most to you through your life.

Marley = )
Sorority Rush Begins - May 2008
Rush - A Sisterhood Novel
Pledge Class - A Sisterhood Novel
Puffin Books