What was your favorite young-adult-fiction as a kid?

Heyo,

Y'know, His Dark Materials trilogy, Narnia, Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, that kind of thing. I've been on a binge of wikipediaing this stuff and recall that, holy shit, I read a lot of these when I was 9-13 years old.

Did any of you duders have any favorites?

Mine was probably Mortal Engines series by Phillip Reeve and CHERUB series by Robert Muchamore.

I loved Artemis Fowl. I read the first book at least ten times. 

I like His Dark Materials a lot but I didn't really find that until I was 16 years old. I have a really hard time remembering anything I read before high school.

I never actually liked reading books for my own age as a kid as I found them very boring and I would space out a few chapters in and never complete the story. They always felt like they were talking down to me and I hated it. The few times that I would actually find myself getting into a book was when I discovered some book for adults. I only really started reading when I was around 10-13 and I read stuff like The Truth Machine, His Majesties Starship, Pet Cemetery, Tommy Knockers and Les Miserable and those books were what made me fall in love with reading and what made me realize how amazing and engrossing reading a book could be. Discovering these books on my own made it feel like it was my little secret that only I knew about. Like it was this little secret world that only me and the pages within knew of and it made reading them special.

In a world where you are constantly being talked down to and told that "you will understand when you get older" or "I will explain it when you are older" every time you tried to bring up a topic of discussion that was deemed taboo for kids to talk about those books were a door into the world of adults for me and they were special.

I mostly read Terry Pratchett books when I was younger. I dislike teenage heroes so I'm not a fan of books like Narnia and Harry Potter.

oh man mortal engines, haven't thought about that one in years.

Harry Potter is great though. Hunger Games is also pretty dope (though the last book wasn't as good, best one was the second I feel), and Artemis Fowl is still pretty great.

I loved the first 4 or 5 Harry Potter books as a kid, but then I grew out of them. Aside from that, most of the things I read were more targeted to an adult audience than YA fiction. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, for example, were my favourite books growing up. Heck, they're still my favourite books now.

The funny thing is, I probably read more YA fiction now than I did as a teenager. These days, I'll often pick up something like The Hunger Games when I'm bored and between books. Sometimes I just want a quick, easy read that I can blast through in a couple of days.

Michael Crichton. I read most of his novels published up to that time in 3rd and 4th grade owing to Jurassic Park.

@crusader8463: Superbly put!

I pretty much did the exact same thing but ended up reading Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, Tolkien, Philip K. Dick and even Tom Clancy (lol but Rainbow Six!) in the 11-15 age range. Beats Harry Potter :)

Man, it's been years since I've read a book, but back in the days I used to read a lot of fantasy-young adult stuff, and I have great memories of the stuff I've read. Harry Potter, The Edge Chronicle, The Bartimaeus Sequence are among the best, but I also remember liking Artemis Fowl, The Wardstone Chronicles, Eragon, Broken Sky, a lot of national stuff you wouldn't have heard off and many others that I can't name right now, it was really a fantastic time.

As a Kid I really liked "The Three Investigators" ("Die drei ???" German name of the series), Edgar Wallace novels and Sherlock Holmes stories.

I don't know if this is classified as young adult but I was really into Stephen King when I was younger. I like to read a lot of classics nowadays.

Animorphs! I loved those books, especially Tobias'. Also I read Harry Potter, Narnia, the usual suspects. I like how short young adult books are, I still like to read them in between long series.

I read a looot of crap when I was younger. But I'm a big fan of the Hobbit and the Belgariad. Both of those are worn out from overuse... I must've read that Belgarion series in its entirety like 12 times. And the first few even more still.

I remember liking parts of Artemis Fowl, but kind of disregarding it as mediocre overall.

I sound like the most pretentious kid ever. Probably not too far off. I feel way more childish and immature at 20. :D

I read way too many Xanth books when I was a kid. The first few are OK, but there came a point where Piers Anthony just stopped giving a shit and turned each book into an endless stream of puns and panty jokes.

Since I'm... well... OLD... I was enamored of The Tripods Trilogy (oh, hey, look, there was a fourth book written after I read the series -- hell, after I read it a second time and found it to be... not so super)... I was also much into Heinlein (the Future History stuff) and Asimov (the Foundation series and the Robot novels and stories)...

R.L. Stine's Goosebumps

What was that stupid series with the bats that...did things...or something? That's about the only series I can recall reading as a kid and I only did that because a teacher forced me to. Man, I used to hate reading so much.

Shade's Children by Garth Nix

I read that when I was about 13 and it was one of the most engaging thing I had ever read. Reading it now, though, it's pretty lame.

Also: The Phantom Tollbooth. I fucking love that book

@crusader8463 said:

I never actually liked reading books for my own age as a kid as I found them very boring and I would space out a few chapters in and never complete the story. They always felt like they were talking down to me and I hated it. The few times that I would actually find myself getting into a book was when I discovered some book for adults. I only really started reading when I was around 10-13 and I read stuff like The Truth Machine, His Majesties Starship, Pet Cemetery, Tommy Knockers and Les Miserable and those books were what made me fall in love with reading and what made me realize how amazing and engrossing reading a book could be. Discovering these books on my own made it feel like it was my little secret that only I knew about. Like it was this little secret world that only me and the pages within knew of and it made reading them special.

In a world where you are constantly being talked down to and told that "you will understand when you get older" or "I will explain it when you are older" every time you tried to bring up a topic of discussion that was deemed taboo for kids to talk about those books were a door into the world of adults for me and they were special.

Wish I was like this. Usually when I read a book past its introduction, I don't understand what's going on. :(

I really liked the Alex Rider books. Something about a young secret agent was so awesome, and I loved how his gadgets were themed around teenager stuff.

Can't think of any because i never really read books as a kid and still don't to this day :-/

I was way into Harry Potter.

Artemis Fowl, Young Bond, Alex Rider, Series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter, Narnia (somewhat).

I really loved the The Outsiders and Where the Red Fern Grows.

I really liked Ender's Game, then I found out Orson Scott Card is a giant douche, which soured the whole series.

Gotta go with Goosebumps. I don't know how Stine did it, but goddamn it's perfect horror for young adults.

I didn't read it as a "kid" exactly, but I read the His Dark Materials trilogy as a teenager and like it. Also, I had to read them for school, and I never really thought of them as young adult fiction or liked them because of that.

I was well into Lloyd Alexander's Prydain and Westmark series. Prydain was my first experience with high fantasy. I also loved Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series... used to listen to the radio drama on NPR with my parents (on an actual radio -the 80s y'all!).

For me it was the Animorphs series, I loved those books and had everyone up until the end.

Then my mom made me donate them to the local library. Man was I depressed after that, would still love to have em today.

I remember really liking Remnants but I never really caught up on it after the first three or four books.

I don't think I read any "young adult" fiction when I was a teenager. I pretty much jumped from stories about animals like the Black Stallion and The Incredible Journey to sci-fi/fantasy novels. When I was a young teen, I read Tolkien, the obligatory Dragonlance, some Terry Brooks, MythAdventures, Little Fuzzy, and a bunch of other stuff. I do remember reading a Judy Bloom novel when I was in 5th grade. Does that count? Does that make me seem less manly?

Goosebumps and I feel awful for it.

@Gargantuan said:

I mostly read Terry Pratchett books when I was younger. I dislike teenage heroes so I'm not a fan of books like Narnia and Harry Potter.

Goosebumps (although that was more "children" than "YA"), Fear Street and Animorphs were my big three. Especially Animorphs, which was oddly well written for it's admittedly dumb premise. I read a few again a couple of years ago, and it totally holds up. Not exactly high literature, but not half bad.

A short-lived series I have fond memories of is a Goosebumps clone called "Strange Matter", with a gimmick of CG-rendered covers (and short galleries, if I remember correctly, in the back... 90s-tastic stuff all around) and a slightly darker tone. One in particular still sticks with me, about a futuristic multiplayer game. Online multiplayer was still a magical idea to me at the time, and I remember being so disappointed when I finally tried it myself and it wasn't anything like the book described... no tense stalking and hiding, no vendettas against mysterious players, just dicks running around and typing insults.

Oh, I read a lot of them. Among my favorites were Bobby Pendragon, the Edge Chronicles, Eragon, Silverwing, Peggy Sue and especially the Hobbit --man, my LOTR fandom has grown at a steady rate ever since. The only notable one I couldn't get into was His Dark Materials, even though my little brother swore by them.

I made that quick list on top of my head, but the extensive one would be very long, as I spent a lot of time in my dad's car as a kid. Divorced parents living 30 miles away, my life was fairly scattered from age 6 to 14 and I was always being lifted somewhere. Me constantly moving around also reduced the amount of friendships I could maintain but my parents' heavy focus on education provided me with a large library to keep me entertained.

Animorphs dog! The series got a bit more mature, bit more fleshed out over the series. Got pretty rad from what I remember.

The Dark is Rising series is the one that I feel like most people don't know about, which sucks because it was awesome in an half old-school, half new-school YA fantasy sorta way. But yeah, Dark Materials, Narnia, etc. I was all over Jules Verne and Frank Herbert, too, but that doesn't really count as YA I guess.

I actually did waay more reading before middle and high school, just because I had more free time. Fucking higher education....

I swear to god I was the only kid who was obsessed with John Bellairs, especially his books about Johnny Dixon. I think I read them all, and I know I still have most of them. I am tempted to read them again, but scared I will ruin the nostalgia.

Lots of D&D; stuff, like Dragonlance and RA Salvatore. Tried going back with an adult brain but man, that stuff was terrible!

I read a lot of Goosebumps and Animorphs. I owned literally every Goosebumps book (including the "Choose Your Own Adventure" spinoffs), but my mom made me sell them all in a garage sale because my family was poor. Sad face :(

The Edge Chronicles were, and still are, incredible. Check em out. Seriously.

I really liked Ender's Game, then I found out Orson Scott Card is a giant douche, which soured the whole series.

@Demoskinos said:

Goosebumps and I feel awful for it.

It's not so bad. If the novels got you into reading, and into reading better books, then they were useful for that at least.

I just want to say, If Harry Potter was a book you were interested in when you were a kid, you are really young. When I was a kid all I had was Animorphs, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, and Goosebumps. Although Sideways Stories from Wayside School was pretty good.

Michael Crichton's books, Dune, and All Quiet on the Western Front.

@Hunter5024 said:

Animorphs! I loved those books, especially Tobias'.

God, those were fucking cheesy. Read the first two, couldn't stomach it, even as an 11-year old, lol.

I had a guilty pleasure of the Redwall series, which I still own every one I managed to get my parents to buy for me back in the day. But, my favorite reading back when I was 13, and still to this day is Dune, no, I don't care that it's college reading level and that I didn't understand a lot of the nuance at the time, it still didn't stop me from reading the whole series at least once a year for the last 12 years!

This is going to age me a bit, but I read the first Harry Potter book when I was 11. And sort of followed the age progression from there.

Though I suppose my favorite series as a "young adult" was Jan Guillou's "Crusades" series.

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