Fandom squee post

[evil_plotbunny]

The nice thing about children's book fandoms is they're mostly short (I'm looking at you, Chalet School), so now might be the perfect time to pick up a new fandom or revisit an old favorite.

Tell us why we should read your awesome fandom in the comments. Don't forget to link to legal sources, if they're available. Many long out of print books are now appearing as ebooks. And there's always the library.

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Bunnicula!

[beatrice_otter]

Bunnicula is a series of books about a vampire rabbit and the family who own him. It's told from the point of view of the family pets, who figure out what Bunnicula is pretty darn quickly. And it's hysterically funny.

Harold, the family dog, tells the stories in a sort of long-suffering Watsonian style. Chester, the cat, is the one who figures out what Bunnicula is, and is a sort of very excitable (and demented) Sherlock Holmes. The author (James Howe) is an Arthur Conan Doyle stand-in. And Bunnicula? Bunnicula never says a word.

I loved the books as a kid, but it wasn't until I was older that I really appreciated the puns and humor of the books, and the way they play on so many genre tropes from detective and horror fiction.

The books are:
Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery
Howliday Inn
The Celery Stalks at Midnight
Return to Howliday Inn
Bunnicula Strikes Again!
Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allen Crow

All are available in both print and Kindle editions at Amazon for around $5 each.

[jadelennox]

Dia Reeves' dark, twisted Portero universe takes place in the fictional East Texas town of Portero. Hanna Jarvinen, the heroine of Bleeding Violet, is the bipolar child of a bipolar white Finnish father and a black Texan mother, and when she moves to Portero to live with her mother she gets wrapped up in Portero's weirdness. The books aren't judgemental about teen sexuality, mental illness, or -- to be honest -- some gruesome violence.

Book two, Slice of Cherry, is the best YA book I'd never put in a teen's hands (it's too weird about when it's morally justifiable to, er, be a serial killer. But in an AWESOME WAY).

Also the Juneteenth barbecue is yay cool.

Dia Reeves at IndieBound

Dia Reeves at your library

[jadelennox]

Blue Monday is a (paraphrased from wikipedia) the adventures of Bleu L. Finnegan and her friends (and a Pooka named Seamus) as they attend in 1991-93. "The first volume has Bleu and Clover seeking revenge on Alan and Victor for putting them in detention over the two boys giving them cookies that had been baked for a fundraiser. Other storylines in the series include the guys filming Bleu naked while she takes a bath; masturbation; Alan trying to get Bleu to go out with him; and a murder mystery dinner gone haywire after three different attendees independently spike the punch."

Blue Monday at your library

Blue Monday at IndieBound

Blue Monday at Oni Press

[jadelennox]

Arlene Sardine was a picturebook.
It was not a picturebook I nominated.
A picturebook someone else nominated, about Arlene, was Arelene Sardine.
When there is a picturebook about a fish who wanted to grow up
To be packed in oil
In a can
That picturebook is one of the best picturebooks ever.

Arlene sardine at IndieBound


Arlene Sardine at your library

The Story of the Treasure Seekers - E Nesbit

[thisbluespirit]

The Story of the Treasure Seekers - E Nesbit (The Bastables Series) (1899)

This one is freely available as an ebook! Here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/770 (And, of course, being a classic, it's still in print and widely avaialble in libraries and various places.)

I'd somehow never read this till recently and (barring one really unfortunate bit of stereotyping in the chapter The Great Benefactor, which I advise you to skip over, or skim), it was just charming: still genuinely funny, well-characterised and an overall delight. Each of the children have their own distinct personalities and viewpoints, and the unreliable narration is great.

The Bastables, the fortunes of their house having fallen (their house is on the Lewisham Road), decide to seek treasure to restore them, and shenanigans ensue but very little conventional treasure is found, basically.

It also occurred to me that it could be a lot of fun to play with for this challenge. In various ways (but it could definitely allow for some entertaining crossovers with the Bastables oblivious of who they'd met).

Dogger by Shirley Hughes

[deep_dark_waters]

(Only posting about the less well known books from my signup - it doesn't mean I want these more than the others.)

Dogger is a picture book about a little boy called Dave whose beloved toy dog accidentally ends up on the jumble sale at the school fair. I've sort of got a two-part love for this book: my most precious thing is my own toy dog, Joe (here in 1990 and here in 2012 ♥), so that panic of losing him always really resounded with me, especially when I was little, but as I grew up I never got bored of the book like I did with some others because Shirley Hughes is such a beautiful artist. There's always something new to see in her illustrations, even if you're reading the book for the hundredth time. She's got this amazing knack of matching story and pictures so perfectly to make something that feels real, like it's something you've half-forgotten from your own childhood, and she's never condescending or overly simplistic even though she writes and illustrates for very young children. She won the Kate Greenaway award for this in 1977, then for the 50th anniversary it was voted the favourite against all the other winners, so it's fairly well known but there's no fic that I know of. Really hope it gets some love!

This is my copy, knackered and creased and falling apart because I used to carry it everywhere with me like a comfort blanket. It's available on Amazon and all over the place and so so so worth looking at if you don't know it because it's honestly the most beautiful picture book I've ever read.

Bonus: I found this adorable kid reading it on Youtube.

Wind on Fire by William Nicholson

[deep_dark_waters]

Wind on Fire is a fantasy trilogy by William Nicholson (available on Amazon/Kindle, etc). Sometimes literally judging books by covers is a brilliant idea - I bought the trilogy on a whim about ten years ago when I saw a really beautiful hardback box set in a bookshop window :D Lifting a summary of the first book from the Telegraph:

"The book tells the story of how a sister and brother (Kestrel and Bowman Hath), and their stinky classmate Mumpo, dare to challenge the oppressive social order that operates in the walled city of Aramanth.

Under this system, families can move up and down the social scale depending on their children's success (or otherwise) in school examinations, and on the parents' success (or otherwise) in their careers. High achievement brings not just prestige, but promotion up the colour-coded, socio-economic ladder [. . .] What happens during this test sets off a chain of events which results in our three young heroes embarking on a mission to uncover the secret of the wind singer, the magical totemic device which is the historic focal point for all the citizens of Aramanth.

In the process, they meet the unfathomable but kindly sub-class of Mud People, they elude the sinister clutches of the prematurely-aged Old Children, and they fall into the hands of both the Chakas and Barakas, two implacably opposed peoples who pursue a perpetual desert war aboard chariots the size of cities. But all this is just a prelude to their final encounter, with an evil more fantastic and deadly that anything they could ever have imagined.."

The first book feels completely different to the second and third. It's set a few years earlier so the children are a bit younger and (imo) much less interesting. There's a lot of action in the first book but it's a little bit of a lot of stuff and ends up feeling kind of like you're being beaten over the head with ~important messages about individuality~. If you stick with it though, books two and three become more focused on the overall story arc of their journey to find the Manth people's homeland. They get really brutal too - there's slavery, mass murder, a really fascinating gladiator-type sport called the manaxa. It's a little while since I last read them so I'm a bit hazy on details, but I remember being slightly bothered by the portrayal of mental illness and some clumsy racial stereotyping, particularly in the first book. That aside, the worldbuilding is incredible, I love how Nicholson doesn't wimp out of letting things be truly bleak/violent/disturbing and then doesn't wimp out of showing the consequences, and his prose is so rich and vivid it's worth reading just for the joy of his words.

Am I Blue? - Bruce Coville

[pleonasm]

This is the title story from an anthology of the same name, with the theme of GBL teenagers. It's one of the very first stories I ever read with gay people as the main character, and it's really easy to find online if you do a quick google. It seems that a lot of universities like to use it as part of their courses.

The basic story is about a young boy who is being bullied for being gay. He hasn't decided himself whether or not he's gay, but someone shows up to grant him three wishes - Melvin, his fairy godfather. Melvin takes him on a brief and friendly tour of gay culture, and then comes the explanation of the Big Gay Fantasy - what if all gay folks were blue-skinned one day, so that everyone was out and straight people saw all the gay people living and working with them? The story here is a bit dated, I'll acknowledge - I think we're doing pretty good with visibility in the US nowadays - but the story is really charming and it's totally worth the 10 minutes you'd spend reading it.

The Ice Ghosts Mystery - Jane Louise Curry

[graycardinal]

The Ice Ghosts Mystery (Jane Louise Curry)

Jane Louise Curry is one of those children's authors who's written a great many books in several genres but has never quite broken through into being well-known outside her field. She's probably best-known for her fantasy, but my very favorite of her books is this one.

Here's the thing: the Bird family in this book reminds me a lot of Madeleine L'Engle's Austins or Murry-O'Keefes. Professor Jeffrey Bird (the father, missing for most of the story) is a brilliant but slightly naive scientist. Mother Molly Bird is multi-competent and supportive, and the three offspring -- Perry, Mab, and Oriole -- are forces to be reckoned with in a variety of ways. And the plot of The Ice Ghosts Mystery runs very much in the same channels as The Arm of the Starfish or The Young Unicorns.

But Curry is not L'Engle, so the tone is a little different. Imagine the above-mentioned L'Engle books as if written by Diane Duane (the Birds are also not unlike the Rodriguez family from the Young Wizards books) or early L. J. Smith (see particularly the Hodges-Bradley clan from The Night of the Solstice). The result is a mystery that combines elements of a nifty SF thriller with a solid "family of sleuths" vibe -- fast-paced, crisply characterized, and as likeable as an enormous shaggy sheepdog. There should have been at least six of these...but there was only ever the one, darnit.

Regrettably, it doesn't seem to have a recent reissue (there was an iUniverse reprint at one point, but its status isn't any too clear at present). But it's not impossible to find print copies, and better/larger library systems may still have it available.

Miss Nelson - Harry Allard

[existence]

Miss Nelson is the star of a trio of picture books written by Harry Allard and illustrated by James Marshall. She is the sweetest, most easygoing teacher in Horace Smedly Elementary and is in charge of room 207. However, when the going gets tough...she's not above taking a step back and letting her possible alter ego, Miss Viola Swamp take the reins to dispense the hard love. (The principal, Mr. Blandsworth, sure isn't.)

Miss Viola Swamp tackles the energetic, creative and silly nature of Room 207 in Miss Nelson is Missing! and Miss Nelson Is Back, and the Smedly Tornadoes, lamest football team in the district in Miss Nelson Has A Field Day. All three of which, are coincidentally, up on Google Books to preview. (Possibly only in the US? Google is mean like that.)

I'm pretty sure reading these books as a kid only helped the development of my sense of subversion, if you're into that kind of thing. Also James Marshal's illustrations are as always, pretty charming.

Google Books
Indiebound.
Worldcat.

Song of the Lioness -- Tamora Pierce

[swan_tower]

The whole Tortall setting has a lot of great stuff in it, but this, the original series, is very dear to my heart. Its premise is not terribly complicated (or original): a girl who wants to become a knight disguises herself as a boy and takes her twin brother's place (sending him off to become a sorcerer, which is what he wants). Despite the books being very short by current standards, they have a lot of great touches in them: the way Alanna has to work for her skills, rather than being immediately talented at everything; the relationship between her and her brother; the way Pierce handles the issue of romance as Alanna grows up. (She has three lovers during the course of the series, and not only does this not get treated as a source of shame, the choice between them is essentially a matter of which version of herself Alanna ultimately wants to be.) If you have a soft spot for medieval knight-errantry in the sort of world where the thieves have a guild and the guy in charge is a rogue with a heart of gold, you should absolutely pick these up. :-)


All four books are available on Amazon, and probably also on B&N, etc.