Recently a coworker and I had a conversation about books that we had read and enjoyed as children. We realized we read a lot of the same books as kids and had fun recounting our favorites. The 90s and 2000s were the days of wonderfully long scholastic paperback book series. Many times these series had to be read in order, but often it did not matter if you missed out on a few volumes. In those days you grabbed whatever was in stock or ordered it using the old easicat system. I still remember the thrill and the smell of going into the Plymouth Library as a child and making my way to the rotating shelves filled with these volumes. I would stock up on any book that caught my fancy or reread any of the old ones that I had enjoyed. I usually left with quite the stack. I had forgotten about some of these books until my coworker and I had this conversation. Other books in this post you will find are still popular today. Dear reader, I hope you enjoy by blast from the past! Maybe this post will transport you back to your own childhood or introduce you to something still in our system that you may enjoy yourself!
Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osbourne
The very first Magic Tree House Book, Dinosaurs Before Dark, was published in 1992. Currently there are 130 books in the series and that number is still climbing! This series will always be special to me as it was the first chapter book series I read as a child and probably responsible for my continuous love of history. I still remember getting so into Pirates Past Noon in first grade that I did not even hear the teacher call us to the rug for story hour! She had to come check on me. I was so into the story I did not hear the rest of the class even move!
The Magic Tree House books are for young readers just starting out into the world of chapter books. The reading is easy and there are still pictures. The series follows brother and sister, Jack and Annie, as they use a magical treehouse to travel through time. They are able to point to a picture in any book within the tree house and wish to go there. Sometimes they are sent on specific missions by Morgan Le Faye, the famous sorcerous from Arthurian Myth. Jack is the scientist of the duo. He is always writing notes in his notebook and reading facts from the various guidebooks that he brings along. This series was the foundation for some of the many random facts and knowledge now rattling around in my brain. Annie, on the other hand, is the dreamer. She trusts unconditionally. She believes in magic and sees the wonder in every moment. She will talk to any animal that they come across and know in her soul that the creature understands. As a child I was totally Annie. Rereading this series as an adult, I find myself to have become more like Jack but desperately clinging to the vestiges of Annie that are still within me. I am trying to nurture that inner Annie inside of myself, I think we all could learn a lot from her. I am currently climbing back into the magic tree house and tagging along with Jack and Annie through their historic adventures. I am looking forward to reliving these childhood adventures and discovering new ones that were published later. Dear reader, I hope you enjoy the ride as well whether coming back or embarking on your first time!
Click HERE to request any of The Magic Tree House books!
Animal Ark Hauntings by Ben M. Baglio
Animal Ark Hauntings is the spin off series to the popular Animal Ark series. Animal Ark follows Mandy Hope, the daughter of a veterinarian, as she helps animals in need or danger. (If your child is an animal lover check these out! There are 94 books in the series counting the ones I will write about here.) Personally Animal Ark Hauntings were my FAVORITE of this series. There were a total of nine Hauntings books published. If you have read previous blog posts of mine you know that I LOVE anything to do with ghosts. In Animal Ark Hauntings Mandy is contacted by the spirits of animals with unfinished business. There is usually a mysterious element involved in these stories and a moody atmosphere. I think I read Stallion in the Storm about five times as a kid. In those days we did not have the resources we have now to get books from all over. Stallion in the Storm and one of the other ones were the only Hauntings books I had access to at that time. Now that I have resources and am feeling nostalgic I plan on rereading the series and finally being able to read the ones I missed out on as a child. Animal Ark is a great series for young readers who love animals. I would highly recommend checking it out if you or your kids are looking for a new series!
Click HERE to request Animal Ark Hauntings!
Click HERE to explore any Animal Ark books!
Goosebumps by R.L. Stine
Goosebumps is a phenomenon. It was popular when I was a kid and is still going strong today. According to my research there are about 137 books in the series. This includes the absolutely fun Give Yourself Goosebumps spinoff. There was a TV show. There have been movies. In short, Goosebumps is good scary fun. Yes they can range into the absurd, but that is part of their charm! In many ways it is The Twilight Zone for kids. The book pictured above was the first published, Welcome to Dead House. Some of my favorites included Say Cheese and Die (I covered that in a 5th grade book report), The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, and One Day At Horrorland. I also really enjoyed many of the Give Yourself Goosebumps books that are modeled after the also popular Choose Your Own Adventure series. My favorite was Escape from the Carnival of Horrors. I read that one so many times as a kid! In these you had to make various choices and turn to specific pages to see if you would get the best story outcome.
Of all of these, the Slappy books have always held a special place in my heart. My mother has a ventriloquist doll that her grandmother gave her when she was a child. After reading the Slappy books I have never quite trusted that doll again. He sits on her dresser facing the bedroom door. The dresser holding the bath towels was next to that door as a child. I would have to turn my back on Danny (the doll) to grab my towel to go shower. I knew nothing would happen, but I always felt that when I turned around Danny would have a knife in his hand or something. Danny is just a ventriloquist doll, but even as an adult I find him to be a bit unsettling. As such, I feel a personal connection to the Slappy books.
I know there are so many Goosebumps books I enjoyed that I have likely forgotten about. This is another nostalgic series I plan on rereading. Dear reader, if you or your kids have not encountered Goosebumps yet give it a try! The spooky season is almost upon us and Goosebumps is good solid fun!
Click HERE to request any of our system’s Goosebumps books!
The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
First published in the 1920s, The Boxcar Children have kept children and adults coming back for generations! Surprisingly, Gertrude Chandler Warner only wrote the first nineteen books of the series. The hundred some books after those nineteen have been published in her name by a group of ghostwriters who have tried to stay true to Gertrude’s original vision. The Boxcar Children are a group of orphaned siblings who take refuge in an abandoned train boxcar. Though the premise sounds awfully bleak, they do eventually find their grandfather who takes them in. Through all of this, the siblings go on all sorts of adventures and solve mysteries. I think The Boxcar Children series was my first introduction to the mystery genre. We had quite a few of them in my school library and I am pretty sure I read all that we had there. You do not need to read The Boxcar Children in order although there is a tiny bit of storyline. Each story presents an intriguing mystery that will keep you guessing! If you or a young reader you know is in the mood for a great mystery series give The Boxcar Children a try!
Click HERE to request a book from The Boxcar Children series!
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz (Artwork by Stephen Gammell)
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and the two others that were a part of the trilogy were loved by many in my generation (90s/2000s). Kids still read these today, but the new editions do not come with the original artwork that some said was too scary for kids. If any young people are reading this, get your hands on an original. You will not regret it. In Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Alvin Schwartz retells old folklore and ghost stories from around the world. Many people have that inner desire to be scared. The stories themselves were scary, but it was the artwork of Stephen Gammell that made them the stuff of nightmares. I have included the below sample:
The artwork was a part of the whole Scary Stories experience. Yeah the tales were fun by themselves, but if you REALLY want to experience the classic stories read an original copy with Gammell’s art. Some of the tales in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark also include tips for reading a scary story around the campfire. These tips really helped me to be a better out loud reader in general. Controlling the volume of your voice, pacing, and sound effects make for a more engaging reading experience.
What were some of my favorites? The Big Toe is a must mention. It is the very first story you will encounter. For me that first dip into the Scary Stories world was the most memorable, though not the best of the tales. The Wolf Girl was also a favorite as while not the scariest, I thought it would be cool to have been raised by wolves as a child. Room For One More caused me to fear elevators for many years. I still think of this story and need to remind myself it is a folktale. I still love it though. Clinkity Clink follows the trope of something being stolen from the dead only for the ghost of that person to come looking for it. For some reason this one scared me more than the others of that trope. The Haunted House is perhaps the most memorable to me as the accompanying image frightened me something fierce. The tale was perfectly scary as well and a great haunted house story. The Red Spot has caused me to never be able to look at spider bites the same way. Other notable favorites include: Somebody Fell from Aloft, The White Satin Evening Gown, Wonderful Sausage, and The Bride. There are so many good and memorable ones it was hard to choose my top favorites. Yeah they still rattle around in my head today, but I LOVE to be scared by things I know are not real.
Bloodhounds INC. by Bill Myers
Even the covers of this series are a great 90s nostalgia trip. Sean and Melissa are a brother and sister detective duo who solve mysteries with their bloodhound named Slobs. Each of the mysteries that Bloodhounds INC. takes on is very reminiscent of the Xfiles or Scooby Doo. There are aliens, vampires, ghosts, even a possessed hot rod at one point. I went to a very small private school as a child. There were about 16 kids in my entire class/grade. We were the largest grade in the school. Being such a small school the teeny tiny school library had slim pickings for books. This was one of my go to book series when it was library visit time. Bloodhounds INC. was just so much fun! One of the high points going for the series was Slobs the dog. Slobs always helped the kids to solve the mystery. If you like whacky fun mysteries and dogs, I highly recommend this series. As it is an older series that is becoming lost to history, we only have one in the system. The rest can be requested via interlibrary loan.
There is only one lone Bloodhounds INC. book left in our system. Click HERE to request it!
Click HERE to access the Interlibrary Loans Page!
Conclusion and Bonus Book
The above are only a few of the book series that I read as a young child. Some were just plain fun and others had a larger impact on my likes and interests to this day. I have a few life long favorites that I plan to reread that I would like to include in a future blog post. These being: Deltora, Unicorns of Balinor, and Spooksville. I covered my much loved Animorphs series in a previous post, and that is a series I highly recommend for all ages. Dear reader, I hope that I have been able to fill you with literary nostalgia or at least provide some special books for young readers today. Below I have included one bonus book that is near and dear to my heart. You will not find this book in any library anymore due to its age and rarity, but I would not be sitting here writing this post as the librarian and book lover I am without it.
Hoot-Owl by Mabel Guinnip La Rue
Hoot-Owl was published in 1936 and was never republished. No new editions of this book exist. You may wonder how an 89 year old book so deeply influenced a 31 year old librarian. I will tell you the tale.
Long before I was born my father stole a book from his school library. Yes, the first novel I ever loved was a stolen library book. Yes, I still have it. My father was a child himself at the time of this theft. The funny thing is, my dad hates reading. Anyway, fast forward to 3-4 year old me. My dad would read me JUST ONE chapter of Hoot-Owl a night before bed.
Hoot-Owl is the story of a little pilgrim boy named Johnny. Johnny’s mother always warned him to stay out of the woods as the woods are dangerous and Native Americans (who in her eyes are dangerous) live there. Does Johnny listen? Heck no. He follows an animal and ends up lost. He is rescued by a Native American trader who is kind. The man is at a loss of what to do as he has no idea where Johnny came from. The trader takes Johnny to a Native American village where a wonderful family gives him a home. The Native Americans are nothing like what Johnny’s mother warned him about. They are good people. The trader promises that in his travels he will put the word out about Johnny and look for his family. Each chapter focuses on a different adventure involving Johnny (Hoot Owl) and his new family. Johnny learns the ways, traditions, and language of the tribe he stays with. He especially bonds with Beaver Boy, his adopted brother. The family is so cool they even let him keep the stray dog he finds. Each chapter of the book teaches either a moral lesson (like telling the truth) or details some aspect of daily life in the tribe (making maple syrup/sugar or a certain way of life/tradition). In one especially fun adventure Hoot and Beaver Boy have to find out who is squashing the pumpkins in Mother’s garden. She was furious as she thought it was them! It turned out to be two frolicking bear cubs. Unfortunately, in the end Hoot’s real (in my opinion uptight and stuck up) family is located. He has to return to being Johnny and give up his adopted family. This is the worst ending. At least his real family lets him keep the dog.
One chapter of this special book a night was not enough for me. I wanted more! In order to get more on my own terms I had to get better at reading on my own. The desire to devour this story again and again at my own pace led me to become the voracious reader I am today. This was the story that launched my journey into the many wonderful worlds books can take us. It will always have a special place in my heart. Dear reader, thank you for joining me on my journey.
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