Old YA Fiction
My mother was a "stay-at-home" mom until I was 18, as well as a history/lit. major whose parents made her read to her younger siblings as a child. Therefore, when I was growing up, I read new children's classics to myself while my mother read old children's classics to me. She read to me constantly, and I specifically remember sitting in the bathtub for like, an hour, while she read to me. Mostly she read books from her childhood, so I picked up a lot of 1960s cultural phenoms in my formative years. Here are the ones I remember most fondly. Some are not well known, some are totes obvi, but all are will be required reading for any potential future children I may raise.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin.
Outside of Roald Dahl (who I am not putting on this list, as all of his books are my favorites), this is my favorite children's book. Case in point: I have a bookcase built into my Portland-bed's headboard, and this is definitely in there, along with like, the "real literature" of Marquez. It has great word-play, an inventive plot, unique and memorable characters, and a mystery that is quite gripping for the under-11 set. Maybe it's the fond memories I have of reading it as a child with my mommy, but I still find it nice to skim through.
Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander.
It's about a cat whose nine lives are spread out over several centuries. He goes to ancient Egypt, he's present at the kidnapping of St. Patrick, he hangs with Leo Da Vinci...and then he takes his 1960s owner Jason back in time to re-visit all these places with him. A talking, time-travelling cat--how could I
not love it?! I did a book report and made a diorama of this in 3rd grade, complete with sugar-cube pyramid.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
Thank god they haven't ruined this book by making it into a movie (update: apparently the did. Fuck). Seriously, this book has the most wonderful puns, word play, and meta-literary techniques to ever reside inside the pages of a children's text. Plus, the illustrator is a bamf. Those simple pen and ink drawings of the 60's are my ideal book illustrations for any text.
The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
The author's name alone clues you in on how imaginative and atmospheric this book is. Confession: I was super-obsessed with ancient Egypt as a child and consumed every known children's book about it. This was one of them, although it centers on a bunch of kids in a 1970s SoCal apartment complex playing a make-believe game of ancient Egyptian gods...until one of the idol statues COMES TO LIFE! Also, cultural note, there are a lot of different ethnicities represented in the apartment house. I feel like it's one of the only 60s kids books to do so without having it be trite.
Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright.
Elizabeth Enright wrote a TON of kids books that take place on the East Coast in romantic little towns full of eccentrics. Siblings Portia (!!) and Foster visit their cousin Julian in this tiny village and find a dried-up lake resort with extravagent Victorian homes. However, some of its residents didn't get the memo that the lake dried up and are still living there as if it were the boom days. The kids are "adopted" by Aunt Minihaha Cheever and Uncle Pindar Payton--GOOD STUFF! Eventually the siblings convince their parents to buy a home there in the sequel "Return to Gone-Away". I wanted to find "forgotten" houses so bad that in the summers I'd wander around on my bike in our beach town, scoping out little alleways and rotting cabins. I never found a romantic, still-preserved house, but I'm sure I found tons of meth-houses.
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken.
Aiken wrote this in the 60s, but it reads like a Victorian children's novel in the vein of
A Little Princess or
The Secret Garden. You get a mysterious English manor, absent parents, an evil nanny, headstrong little girls, and frilly clothes. There's something about evil wolves chasing them (the book's part of a series, but I never read the others), and the girls have to leave the manor because of the evil nanny. They run around on the moors trying to escape the wolves and try to get the parents back from India so they'll expel the nanny from the property. It's pretty dark, and I can safey say it put the fear of God in me while still managing to entertain me to no end. I SO wanted to be one of those Victorian children who finds extreme adventure in moldy old houses while wearing petticoats and riding ponies.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg.
I don't think I really need to explain. I think I got too carried away with myself when claiming "Westing Game" as my hands-down favorite, because "Basil E." is EPICALLY EPIC. If you haven't read this, you probably shouldn't apply to be on Team Lara. I'm considering naming a child Claudia after this book's bad-ass. The girls of 60s YA fiction were, on a whole, way way cooler than those of the 80s and 90s (excepting Hermione and Ginny, natch). This is definitely required reading for any friends, lovers, or future children. I think this is why I love museums and "The Royal Tenenbaums" so much. Seriously, "Tenenbaums" would be way weaker without the "Basil E." references and general Konigsburg-tone.
The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden.
From the same author-illustrator team who brought us that perennial 3rd grad favorite
Mr. Popper's Penguins. I remember crying during a reading of
Cricket, and I wanted a pet cricket so I could have it sleep in a cozy little match-box bed--such are the many memorable, darling details of Selden's MAGNUM OPUS!
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.
I specifically remember being confused on how to pronounce her last name, and I can still say I have a little confusion: "Long-ell"? "Lang-ell" "Ling-ell"? So many options. That is not, however, what I most remember about this book. I'm pretty sure if you haven't read it you're not American. That's all there is to it. Classic. Plus, I always sympathized with Meg's messy hair. And Calvin O'Keefe sounded like a super hottie. I read the whole series. There are like, a MILLION of the freaking things, but none of them quite compare with this one. Literary connection: Ellen Raskin (see first entry) illustrated the edition that my mom has on our bookshelf.
Okay, obviously this list is not exhaustive of my literary consumption as a child since I didn't list any Victorian children's lit, contemporary lit. (Hellloooo "Number the Stars"), the Ramona series, or Roald Dahl. However, it's a pretty good representation of what has cumulated in my literary personality. After writing all these down, I realize that my mother picked out some killer girl characters for me to emulate, and moost of these were written by women. Way to be progressive, 1960s juvenile literature!
