I'm not looking for Animorphs or Percy Jackson or the Baby Sitters Club!
Tell me about the weird kids' books no one else has ever heard of! The kooky trilogies no one ever suggests, the weird sci-fi chapter book you read until the pages were falling out, the story you still think about 15 years later, the one off Scholastic book fair purchase kid you couldn't put down.
by Its_Curse
14 Comments
Caddie Woodlawn. One of my favorites.
That “Gnomes” book fascinated me. I think there was gnome nudity? It was wild but I was always flipping through it like a freak.
The Boxes, by William Sleator
*The Ear, The Eye and The Arm* by Nancy Farmer, an afrofuturist sci fi kids book that really captured my imagination.
Books by Lurlene McDaniel. Have you read The Fault in Our Stars? Yeah, her books are basically like those only they came out like 20 years before it. When everyone was obsessing with TFIOS, I was all obnoxiously hipster about it. Saying I was reading terminally ill kid fiction inspiration porn before John Green came along and that book sucks compared to One Last Wish series. Gosh I was insufferable! (Still am sometimes too).
Mine was The Phantom Tollbooth. Felt super weird and playful as a kid, and I still think about some of the wordplay bits.
I loved Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH but I didn’t read it until the 2000s, so it was pretty obscure by then
My Teacher is an Alien. Also this insane pop up book of Old Testament Bible stories my grandparents had.
Bored of the Rings
I’m not sure if Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books count as obscure, but it’s been 30 years and I can still abjure the Lone Power from memory.
I loved a book called The Hero From Otherwhere. Possibly my first introduction to Norse mythology.
I was obsessed with The Great Brain! Very weird books looking back
Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes – more of a YA book. Science fiction. Loved it so much I read it over and over again!
Interstellar Pig
Behind the Attic Wall
The Dark is Rising series