Brainstorming and Schedule

[evil_plotbunny]

The Exchange at Fic Corner 2013 Revised Schedule
July 6th - Comm Opens for Brainstorming
July 12th - 22st - Nominations
July 23nd - 30th - Sign-Ups
July 31st or August 1st - Assignments Sent Out
September 22nd - Deadline for Stories
September 29th - Collection Goes Live

Got a favo(u)rite kids or YA book or series or story you want other people to write for or request? Want to know if you're "the only one" who ever read that one particular book or who loves that certain character?

Go forth in the comments and pimp your favo(u)rites.

ETA: Some helpful brainstorming links provided by elf and a few added by me.
Newbery Medal list
Links to other Youth Awards from ALA including the Batchelder (translation) and Belpre (Hispanic/Latino). Scroll down for links to the Coretta Scott King (African-American/Black) and Printz (YA) The Notable Books lists linked in the sidebar are also of interest.
Juvenile Series and Sequels
from the MCPL database (looong list.)
Goodreads Top 100 Middle School Must Reads from Goodreads
Obscure:
A List of Series and Sequels for Juvenile Readers. Compiled in 1915. (Edith Nesbit is included. And Lewis Carroll. And Dumas was apparently considered youth reading.)
Mary Crosson's "Plain Jane" Series List. Public domain (pre-20s) children's and teens series available on the web.

Comments

[graycardinal]

This is going to be interesting; here's a longish list of authors/books/series that popped into my head as this exchange was being born -- many of them older works, many probably very obscure. So one of the questions here is "Does anyone but me remember these?"


Amerman, Lockhart - Guns in the Heather; The Sly One (Jonathan Flower books)
Appleton, Victor - Tom Swift (series #4, 1990ish)
Campbell, Hope - Meanwhile, Back at the Castle
Chambers, Kate - Diana Winthrop series
Curry, Jane Louise - The Ice Ghosts Mystery; The Sleepers
Erwin, Betty K. - Go to the Room of the Eyes
Hicks, Cliffort B - Alvin Fernald series
Newman, Robert - The Case of the Baker Street Irregular (& sequels)
Pope, Elizabeth Marie - The Sherwood Ring
Smith, L.J. - The Night of the Solstice; Heart of Valor
Tallis, Robyn - Planet Builders series
Wickenden, Dan - The Amazing Vacation
Williams, Jay & Abrashkin, Raymond - Danny Dunn series

I'll try to annotate or describe some of these a bit later; for the moment, feel free to chime in if any of them resonate.

[elf]

Oooh Alvin Fernald and Danny Dunn!

I have very fond memories of SuperWeasel. I have more vague memories of Danny Dunn, except that I know I loved them.

[grrlpup]

Ditto on Alvin Fernald and Danny Dunn! :)

[snacky]

Ah, I love so many of these!

Betty K. Erwin - ANY of her books for me! Alvin Fernald, NIGHT OF THE SOLSTICE!

[graycardinal]

So. Annotations and descriptions for a few of the most obscure of these:

Guns in the Heather, Cape Cod Casket, and The Sly One (Lockhart Amerman)
1960s. Jonathan Flower's father is a spy; Jonathan and his friends occasionally run into mysterious situations that either overlap with his father's cases or end up requiring secret-agent panache to resolve. Amerman manages the difficult trick of making these both highly amusing and genuinely suspenseful.

Meanwhile, Back at the Castle (Hope Campbell)
A somewhat eccentric family buys a tiny island in the St. Lawrence, and discovers that the US/Canadian border goes around the island -- on both sides, such that it's arguably not in either nation. So they set up the independent republic of Great Mosquito Island; comedy and political silliness ensues.

the Diana Winthrop mysteries (Kate Chambers)
1983-84. Six slim paperbacks, featuring unusually well-plotted "teen sleuth" puzzles and a large extended family. "Chambers" turns out to have been a pen name for Nicole St. John, who wrote as "Norma Johnston" among several other pseudonyms.

The Ice Ghosts Mystery (Jane Louise Curry)
1972. This is what one might have gotten if Madeline L'Engle had written a "Happy Hollisters" or "Bobbsey Twins" mystery -- lively family interplay, hair's-breadth suspense, and a clever science-fictional suspense thriller plot. Curry is better known for fantasy (I also really like The Sleepers, a modern-Arthurian yarn that compares favorably with parts of the Dark is Rising sequence), but this may be my very favorite of her works.

the Planet Builders series (Robyn Tallis)
1980s. Ten-volume paperback series; YA sci-fi featuring a large ensemble cast, an interesting colony world, and a slew of excellent writers behind the Tallis name (including Sherwood Smith, Mary Frances Zambreno, and space-opera geniuses Debra Doyle and James Macdonald). A rarity: while the teens are the stars, the grownups are surprisingly well-rounded.

The Amazing Vacation (Dan Wickenden)
Entry kentry cutry corn, apple seed and apple thorn.
Wire, briar, limber lock, a witch and griffins in a flock.
We fly o'er hill and over plain; we fly through sun and wind and rain.
We even fly when it's sleeting or snowing, so Open Sesame -- let's get going!

Post-Eager, pre-Norton. Brother and sister step through a magic window into the Country Without a Name. Adventures ensue, involving a porpentine, long-simmering conflicts, puns, and the unexpected solution to a long-standing family mystery.

[evil_plotbunny]

I remember:

Appleton, Victor - Tom Swift (series #4, 1990ish)
Campbell, Hope - Meanwhile, Back at the Castle
Chambers, Kate - Diana Winthrop series
Curry, Jane Louise - The Ice Ghosts Mystery; The Sleepers
Erwin, Betty K. - Go to the Room of the Eyes
Hicks, Cliffort B - Alvin Fernald series
Newman, Robert - The Case of the Baker Street Irregular (& sequels)
Pope, Elizabeth Marie - The Sherwood Ring
Smith, L.J. - The Night of the Solstice; Heart of Valor
Tallis, Robyn - Planet Builders series
Williams, Jay & Abrashkin, Raymond - Danny Dunn series

And the title of Guns in the Heather sounds familiar. All would be great!

[graycardinal]

[faints dead away]

Someone else remembers Diana Winthrop! (When I brought her up a couple of years ago pre-Yuletide, the silence was deafening....)

[evil_plotbunny]

Sadly, I can't say I remember it beyond probably reading one 20 years ago...