You have your Lois Duncans, your R.L. Stines, etc. but those never truly scared me. The endings were predictable. Christopher Pike on the other hand, wrote the fucking creepiest books ever. I just realized, thanks to my local used bookstore, that he released an adult novel in 2007.

Um, why wasn’t I notified? His adult novels have been hit or miss. However, Season of Passage seriously changed my life. Turn off the computer. Go ge a copy. Read. It. Now.

But, Christopher Pike ruled my teen years when I got too old for Kristy and the Gang and the Wakefield twins. The first one I picked up was Chain Letter and it scared me to the core! In other teen horror, there was some ending where the main character always saved the day. People died in Pike’s books. And died pretty gruesomely. Something about Chain Letter totally had me freaked out but also had me hooked.

Most of his main characters were headstrong teenage girls in their junior or senior years of high school, and seemed really older than their ages. They always were pretty confident in themselves and seemed pretty mature. As in, they were able to hatch their own murderous plans and figure out intricate supernatural conspiracies. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Although I devoured every single one of his books with glee, they always kind of had the same elements:

• Everything is perfectly fine and normal in their lives until one day….
• They usually just have recently had sex with their boyfriends for the first time
• Something that may have a simple explanation turns out to be some convoluted, way out there plot involving time travel, government conspiracies, ghosts, robotronics, the space program, etc.
• Near the end, the mastermind behind the plot will take the character hostage and reveal all the details of their genius plot
• the women often dressed in silk shirts and colored slacks

Here are some of my favorites and the plots that I can recall from memory. Sometimes I think I may have imagined these while on a bad acid trip.

Scavenger Hunt: the school organizes the titular hunt but really its a plot hatched by two lizards from an ancient lizard society posing as a brother and sister at the school. One of the other characters starts to realize that they are not what they seem when they see them making out. Wtf kind of drugs would make someone come up with a plot like that?

Die Softly: Two cheerleaders are really murderous scheming coke addicts until one turns against the other and fakes her death in a firey car crash. She sets up the dorky school photographer to see pictures of the killing for some reason that suits her plans. In other words, awesome.

See You Later: A guy befriends an older couple who really turns out to be him and his girlfriend who came back from the future (how he couldn’t tell this I’ll never know). They are back to warn them to not fall in love because somehow them being together is the cause of an intergalactic nuclear war. I also remember this one made me bawl like a baby every time I read it.

Fall Into to Darkness: One rich spoiled brat is jealous of her best friend so she frames her for her murder; she jumps off a cliff so it looks like the friend pushed her, but she really had a hidden rope. The friend that she enlists to help her is secretly evil and actualy kills her for real. The friend is on trial and she finally figures out the plot. Sadly, this was made into a tv movie starring Jonathan Brandis (RIP) and Tatiana Ali. I never saw it though.

Whisper of Death: this one needs to be a movie. Produced by the sci fi channel, but with better special effects. A group of a few teens wake up one day to find that they are the only ones left in their town, save for a classmate of theirs who died recently. She write fables about each of them which turn out to come true, and predicts their deaths, one by one.

Remember Me: This one was longer and more involved. Shari is pushed over a balcony, but wakes up as a ghost and helps investigate her own death. Turns out she was pushed by her brother’s girlfriend, the daughter of their housekeeper, who is really her mother because she and her brother’s girlfriend were switched at birth. That’s right, her brother was actually dating his biological sister. She tried to inject him with too much insulin but ghost Shari and her ghost crime fighting friend save the day. It was actually less cheesy than it sounds.

I missed some of the later ones, like the Last Vampire Series and all the stupid sequels to Remember Me. What was it about these books that were so haunting? They stay with me even today.

I included both covers. I guess the first one came out and they realized that the people looked about 37 years old.

This is one of those examples of when the book was way better in my memory than in real life. As we know, Ann is a terrif writer, but she must have spewed this one out to fullfill a contract. It’s like a hodgepodge of discarded BSC plotlines. Here’s the scoop: Melanie’s family vacations on Fire Island every summer and she meets this boy Justin and they have the titular summer romance. He is all mysterious about himself and when the school year starts she finds out he actually is about to star in a sitcome and becomes a teen idol. Melanie is mad that he did not reveal this to her (yes, teenagers would be SO ANGRY if they were dating a teen idol) so she tracks him down and they live happily ever after.

Melanie is quite irritating. She is eternally chipper and chatty. When Justin asks her out, she runs home to her family and announces it and makes a big deal. Maybe it’s just me that thinks this is weird, because I was never one to reveal all the details of my dating life (what existed of it) to my whole family. Justin is like a combination of Tobey (Stacy’s boyf from Sea City) and Zac Efron. At least in my mind. They hang out on the beach, eat French fries, go clamming and walk around. I guess they have fun but it’s nothing extraordinatory. Except that they drop the l-bomb after three weeks. When they are out, Justin holds Melanie’s hands between his and calls is a “hand sandwich”. As soon as I read that again the memories of that line came flooding back. Justin is a tool.

The family who has the house next to Melanie’s on fire island has three kids the same age as the kids in Melanie’s family, and they all are “summertime best friends”. This is puzzling, because these are a lot of characters to introduce that are never heard from again. Mel’s sbff is Lacey, who is from New York City, so you know that means according to Ann M.- she is uber-sophisticated and hangs out at the Met and the Empire State Building and shops at Bloomingdale’s every day.

Also, Mel’s kind of a bitch for designating her best friends as her “summer” bf and her “regular” bf.

Lacey does keep it real- she gets a little miffed that Mel gets a boyfriend because Melanie won’t shut up about it she feels like it is going to change things between them. Lacey I hear you- I still kind of feel that way about my friends.

So back during the school year Melanie goes on bland dates with a guy PJ and he asks her to go steady, but she can’t because she just! can’t! stop! thinking! about! Justin! She and Lacey try to track him down by using the phone book. Yikes! How eighties of them! That’s the other thing- at the end of the summer, Justin did not give Melanie his contact info saying he moves around a lot and that he’ll take hers and call her when he gets settled. That’s his 1987 15-year-old way of saying “I’m just not that into you.”

Justin is on a sitcom that, by the way it is described, sounds like a cross between Family Matters and Step by Step. In other words, hilarious.

Melanie visits Lacey in the city during the school year and reads in a magazine that the cast of the show will be appearing at Lincoln center so she drags Lacey there, and I am sure that Lacey is fucking thrilled to be Mel’s wingman AGAIN. She sees Justin there and asks him for his autograph, and when he sees it’s Melanie, he writes “I love you” and his phone number. Even when my nine-year-old self was reading this, I found all the love talk weird. Maybe I was just really cynical about it then too.

So they meet up once again in the city and Justin gives her a bag of sand from Fire Island to remember when they met. Vomit.

Ann can totally do better- and has. What is with her obsession with Fire Island? That is where the Russo’s went in Eleven Kids, One Summer. And where the BSC go a couple of times.

Taking a little snark break to remember an oldie but goodie. Man, I must have read this book hundreds of times. It reminded me a lot of Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade. The main character, Lissa, was only in fifth grade but had a pretty strong voice and seemed so grown up to me. I can totally remember the plot like I just read it yesterday.

There’s this bitchy popular girl named Debra who always needs to be the center of attention (a Jessica Wakefield in-training, if you will). She creates a cheerleading team for their school’s soccer team. Lissa is not asked to join, and takes her little brother to the soccer game. He ends up humiliating the cheerleaders, and Debrea decides she has it out for Lissa.

So Debra creates a super-exclusive club called FUNCHY and invites everyone but Lissa. Lissa finally infiltrates and finds out the secret- that the club really means fun lunches, where people share lunch- and calls bullshit on Debra and makes others see what a little snot she is. I remember the ending being where al Debra’s club starts leaving and she has a little hissy fit.

The plot was more about remaining true to yourself and your friends, not doing things just because others are doing it, and the importance of family. Fuzzy hugs and rainbows!

I didn’t reread this one, but it totally popped into my mind. I got it from those book order catalogs that you would get in school. The other kids would get the sticker posters and the Dynamite magazines, but I would get a shitload of books. Because my parents were good like that. This was one. The sixth grade were having a sleepover (dur) and the main character is anxious about it because she is deathly afraid of the dark and doesn’t want anyone to know about it. Not going is apparently not an option, besides, why miss out on all the fun? She and her best friend go shopping for new pajamas, which they described in detail, which is a requirement for mentioning any clothes in a YA book. And then she goes to the sleepover and does ok, but spends half the night in the bathroom. I know there were other people to help her through it and she triumphs in the end.

I thought the idea of a school sleepover was fantastic, and I got my wish in eight grade when my jr high had an Awake-a-thon, where we all stayed awake for a whole night in the gym for charity. I don’t know whose bright idea that was, it is not really healthy for kids to stay up all night. I remember mostly dancing to Paula Abdul on someone’s boom box to pass the time. I came home and fell asleep in my breakfast, head first, just like on tv.

OMG, CLASSIC! I read the shit out this one. Rereading it, it still held up as a good book. Although thinking about it, it is a little bit of a ripoff of Blubber. Barthe is one of those children’s authors that does a great job of writing from a children’s perspective without being condescending or childish, if that makes sense. She doesn’t need to launch into a lot of background about characters, but builds the characters based on dialogue and action.

Jenny is the main character, and she has two best friends, Diane and Sharon. Diane is a sassypants and is a bit cranky and mouths off to adults and tends to be moody. In other words, she rules. Sharon is kind of an ass and she and Jenny are not always on good terms because Sharon always talks about what her mother thinks.

Elsie is the new girl at school, and everyone is horrified because she is really fat. The way they describe it, they probably mean morbidly obese. (Although she barely looks chubby on the cover.) She is also unfriendly and steals food from other people. She is on a strict diet and the principal and the teacher talk about it in front of the whole class which was totally asinine. Elsie is also mean and standoffish and immediately she starts getting made fun of. Soon people’s lunch money gets stolen and Jenny catches Elsie buying junk food with it because she is not allowed to have money of her own.

One day in front of the class Elsie’s pants fall down and she runs to the bathroom. Jenny, taking the high road, goes and comforts her and tries to realize that something else is going on with Elsie because she seems so unhealthy. Jenny has Elsie tutor her in math to earn back the money she stole.

We learn that Elsie eats because her home life sucks. Her parents got divorced and her mother kind of ignores her and favors her other sister. I think it is Emily’s stepmother Karen in a former life. Jenny convinces Sharon and Diane to befriend Elsie too, and they hang out and have fun because it turns out Elsie is cool and one of the smarter kids in the class.

One afternoon, they decide to hitchhike to a carnival and they get on a flatbed truck and in a fit of panic jump off at a red light but accidentally leave Elsie’s little sister on the trunk. They have to call the police and Elsie is pretty sure her mom will flip out and send her away to boarding school or something. But Jenny has her mom call Elsie’s mom to talk to her but Elsie’s mom is a total Scorpian Woman.

Finally their teacher talks to Elsie’s mom and she gets to stay and all is well in friendship land. The last scene of the book, Elsie proclaims that she can actually see her feet for the first time in a long time because she’s losing weight.

I know there are a couple of sequels dealing with Elsie, and it turns into all about boyfriends and such. As most YA novels do. Blah.

I was in Barnes and Noble and accidentally on purpose wandered into the young adult section and I noticed that most of the featured books were about Vampires and/or rich kids. (Yes, I know I need to read Twilight.)

Apparently, these are the series that are all the rage.

Gossip Girl: obvs, you probably know about these. Rich kids on the Upper East Side of Manhattan spend their parents money and sleep with each other’s boyfriends.

A-List: Rich kids in Beverly Hills

The Clique Series: Rich kids at a private day school

The Private Series: rich kids at a private boarding school

Anyone see a pattern? What happened to the underdogs? The awkward girls? The Margarets and the Kathleens? Why the sudden fascination with rich, vapid, and materialistic? Where success is defined as cutting other girls down and bullying? And snagging the rich popular guy? I know that this stuff can be fun to read about as a guilty pleasure. And of course, as always, it’s always great to have girls read, but the girls who are probably into reading don’t need to have these messages hammered into their minds. I guess I have kind of accepted the fact that other forms of media are totally corrupted for young girls (uh, who HASN’T been sucked into a marathon of The Hills) but leave literature alone! Let that be a place where girls can get positive messages!

These make Jessica Wakefield seem like Gidget.

Thank you to someone in the Lost and Found who helped me remember this book, and I snatched it up at my library (which has an awesome “young teen” section, btw) Also, mary Dowmng Hahn is quite the kickass author. Because she is able to really depicts young people’s problems and stuff without being condesding.

Anyhoo, Kathleen, who is twelve, family has four girls, and she is the oldest. Her father just lost his job, so they have to sell their house and move in with her aunt and uncle on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. They have to deal with their bitchy fourteen-year-old cousin Fay nd deal with her parents fughting and stuff. Kathleen is awkward and bookish, Patsy is ten and a smart-ass, Mo is the kid and Rosie is the baby. Fay is also secretly dating a twenty-year old sailor named Joe, who they all grow a little bit attached to.

Fay may be the meanest, most obnoxious character I have ever read. maybe even worse than Jessica. Is that possible? She is so obnoxious and immature, and dresses to show off her big boobs. Joe thinks she is 18, and I am not sure how she convinces him. The ironic thing to me is that Kathleen is very self-concious of her tall, thin, bony frame, and is envious of Fay’s “plump” figure. In fact, Fay is mentioned as being “pudgy” often. Maybe it is because of the times? You would think now that being rail thin is what girls want to be. I don’t think you hear so much about girls being mad because they are flat-chested, it’s more that girls are mad because their hipbones are not jutting out above their jeans. it’s all perspective, I guess.

They all hang out at the beach a lot, because Fay is forced to take them, and thay all become attached to Joe. Kathleen is secretly jealous of when Fay makes out with him, and Jow tries to make her feel better by telling her that she really is a pretty girl. If Joe wasn’t dating a 14 year old, he is actually not much of a creep. Finally, Patsy tells Joe Fay’s secret and Fay’s parents find out, and they have a shit fit and Joe makes himself scarce, which is probably a good idea. Fay is distraught and enlists Kathleen into helping her sneak out to see him at a bar, and they are found by the police and get in trouble again. Fay and kathleen start to get a long a little bit. Kathleeon’s father takes a job working for their uncle, and they nd up finding a house nearby. Also, Kathleen’s mother is pregnant and her father starts drinking a lot. But, things seem t look up a little bit in the end.

You know, it is so HARD to snark on ome of these books, becuase this was seriously a good one and one of my favorites when I first read it. I actually got emotional from it and I wish there was a sequel because I wanted to know if everything turned out okay and what happened to Kathleen!

I tink it shows good writing in children’s literature (and other literature for that matter) to not have these forced intoductions and character intros (they were identical in looks, right down to their matching lavelieres. But that is where the similarites ended….) but to give you a sense if a character through their actions and dialogue.

Ah, I love reading books from my past that give me the warm fuzzies and not fits of rage….

Oh. my. god. This book is incredible. And I am being serious. It is actually harder for me to for real praise a book, because the snark comes easier for me than the praise. Go figure. Ann M. Martin, when she is actually writing the books, is a really great children’s author. She really does have a good way of writing from a child’s perspective. That’s probably why the earlier BSC books are good. Here’s the deal: The Rosso family has 10 kids, each a year apart, and their names are alphbetical, chosen in order from the baby book. So they have some wacky names. They just moved from New York City to a farmhouse is Jersey (Ann loves those farmhouses). First off, how did they live an apt with 10 kids? Okay, I think there were only 3 bedrooms, but if you have ten kids, how and why in the fuck would you live in NYC? From the descriptions it seems like they also lived in midtown Manhattan, which is also kind of unikely. Ann really loves talking about NYC but in reality she doesn’t really know much about it. The kids all want a pet, but the mother always say “ten kids is enough.” I kind of want one of the kids to retort: “well, it’s not my fault you don’t believe in birth control”.

Each chapter is written from a different kid’s perspectice which I thought (and still do) is awesome. To this day I actually prefer books that are written from multiple character’s perspectives (i.e. Home At the End of the World, most Douglas Coupland books, to name a few). When I tried writing my own teen novel, I always had lots of characters and wrote different chapters based on them. *

Ann really liked to write about families with lots of kids (i.e., the Pikes) and now I see why. They are tons of fun. Now I know when I was growing up I wished I had tons of brothers and sisters. There was always someone around to play with or to create drama. Even if you didn’t have friends as a kid, you kind of did. Not that I want to have kids or anything…

Abigail: her chapter describes the move and how it takes them hours to pack up and leave because no one is ever ready to leave at once. Plus, she’s embarassed because she’s a teenager

Calandra: is reading the Secret Garden and wants to find a Secret Place, and she finds a secret room in her house which CONVENIENTLY has a diary of a girl from the early part of the century, also describing how they have no pets.

Ira: he’s seven, and poor kid, he’s anal retentive. The kids start their first day of school and Ira is embarassed because he has so many siblings and all with unusual names. So during show and tell he tells the class that he has pet monkeys and cobras and tarantulas and the class likes him. Finally he has to tell the truth but the class still likes him. Awwww! He is such a cutie. And will probably need massive therapy when he is older

Dagwood: convinces the parents to let them have a Halloween party. He dresses as a famous magician, and his littlest sister Jan is his assistant, and loves the costume idea because she gets to wear sparkly things and her new Mary Janes. that cracked me up)

Eberhard: likes solving mysteries, and tries to solve the mystery of why their garbage keeps getting turned over. He concludes that it is a person on stilts, when it is actually a deer fawn. The family laughs at his idiocy.

The creepy twins find a nest of baby birds and take care of them. I find them irritating.

Jan is kind of bratty and loves being the baby and demands attention all the time.

Bainbridge tries to start a football team and then gives up (it’s a pointless plot device.) The kids find a kitten and they are allowed to keep it because Mama Russo is PREGGERS! AGAIN!

Ah. What a feel-good book. It’s got tons of fun anectodes about how the household runs and the quirkiness of the parents. Not at all a freaky family like the Duggars. I am feeling all warm and squishy now, so I’ll be meaner next time. It won’t be hard because I am reading Elizabeth’s Secret Diary which is beyond stupid.

*yes, the truth comes out. In my tween years I wrote some YA “romance” books which I found a couple years ago when my parents were moving and I had to come home to go through my old stuff. At the time I ran it out to the dumpster because I would be MORTIFIED if anyone found it. I kind of wish I had kept it because I totally would have posted it on here. Another time I’ll tell you all about it.

I was wandering aimlessly through Barnes and Nobles and noticed that the Vampire Diaries are being re-released. I totally forgot about these until that moment and I almost wet my pants with joy. I don’t remember the exact details but I know some Jessica-esque gal has a torrid affair with a vampire and then his twin brother tries to steal her away. Or something. I just remember them being suuuper sexual without actually containing sex. L.J. Smith also wrote The Secret Circle Series and oh my god those were awesome too. I used to have a thing for vampires…oh hell, I still think vampires are kind of hot. The Vampire Lestat totally did it for me…except when he turned his mom into a vampire and they kind of made out. Anyway, each new book contains two of the old books. I snatched ‘em up and totally will be reporting back.

Old cover:

New sooooper sensual sexy cover:

While Ann M. Martin created her own ghostwriter dynasty with the Baby-Sitters Club, I forget that she was actually a good writer, and wrote some more mature young adult fiction.

Missing Since Monday was intense. If I remember correctly, Maggie’s half-sister is kidnapped and her stepmother kind of blames her a little, but it turns out that she was taken by Maggie’s crazy and estranged mother. They find out because Maggie’s mother calls to ask to meet them, but the police have their phone tapped and follow Maggie when she goes to meet her. When I was a kid I had an irrational fear of being kidnapped. I guess I shouldn’t have flattered myself too much.

My mother brought Slam Book home from me because she assumed it would be like another BSC book. I remember reading this in the sixth grade and shit was it INTENSE. The gals start high school and start a slam book to gain popularity. One of them is a rich bitch, one has such a messed up home life so she is involved in every single school activity. They play a mean joke on the poor, overweight unpopular girl and she gets so upset she kills herself. And they kind of describe it in detail. It really shook me to the core. It is nice to know that Ann does understand that some teenagers go through some serious shit, and don’t just spend their time throwing beauty pageants for little kids in their neighborhoods.

If she wrote some adult books, I would totally read them.

Also, remember Ten Kids, No Pets? This was basically a stand-alone that read like a BSC book. The awesome part was that every chapter was told from the perspective of each of the ten kids. I remember this being great, but it could have been horrific.

Anyone remember this one? It was one of my favorites. I am trying to remember the plot from when I read this about 20 years ago. Two girls are paired together to do community service, and part of it is to read to children. They read a book about a dog giving birth, and I don’t even know what was scandalous about it, they didn’t show the dogs copulating or the actual birth canal or anything, but the teachers of the school were up in arms and it created a big controversy. The girls fought for the kid’s rights to hear the story and it was all mini-activism stuff.

I had my parents send me more of my books from childhood, which they have in storage, so I’ve been skimming some that I remember that were pretty awesome. Did anyone ever read this one?

Holy shit, this book was my life. These teenage girls had a rock band and they became frustrated that no one was taking them seriously because they were women. So they decided to cross dress and pose as an all-boy group. Then they gain popularity and attract lots of adoring female fans and hikinks ensue while they try not to reveal their true identities. First of all, how in the hell did they even pass as boys? That astounded me. Looking back, I now see this could have been a statement of feminism/the glass ceiling and even on the effects of transphobia. Or maybe I am looking into it too much.

Some boy in their class finds out their secret and blackmails them into letting them join their band. They also enter a battle of the bands type thing and their identities are revealed and they still get chances to play. Their one fan, Didi is in love with their guitarist and follows them around threatening to steal their identity.

They also end up entering a battle of the bands and winning, finally revealing their identities to the world. This really should have been a series.

Anyone remember these?

There were a ton in this series, all about boys. I remember a couple of things:

• It took place in Washington Heights, NYC.
• They had a clique that used to hang out at the park wall
• One gal went to an all-girls school and was peeved that she couldn’t be around boys.
• One gal named Darlene already had hairy armpits and a D-cups in the fifth grade.
• At one point, I think in the sixth grade, they all decided they would only like boys if they were in the eighth grade or older.
• Eventually in high school the character dated this street kid and the whole book was basically them breaking up, making up, and making out.
• It was awesome.

Also, if you want to read along; coming up: Miss Teen Sweet Valley, Regina’s overdose, and more cheerleading drama.