The next question you ask is... "Why?" My answer is... Um... er... why... not?

• Dogs don't tell jokes
• Holes --this is such a brilliant book. I'm glad the movie made more people aware of this book-- and it was a pretty decent movie, too. But yeah. It's just simply BRILLIANT. It's just great to read for the FIRST time, you start out having no idea what's going on and then gradually all the puzzle pieces start falling into place, the number of times your brain positively smiles with an "a-HA!" is just SO MUCH FUN-- and then it's STILL fun to REread, just to ADMIRE how it all comes together! Yet another book that everyone everywhere has to read.
• Sideways arithmetic from Wayside School
• Sideways stories from Wayside School --yeah, so like, Louis the Yard Teacher... he's not autobiographical or anything....
• Sixth grade secrets
• Someday Angeline
• There's a boy in the girls' bathroom
• Wayside School is falling down

• The catcher in the rye --so does anybody know WHY this is like THE Reluctant Reader Favorite Teen Book of All Time? It's odd, everyone I've met who's said, "Yeah, I don't really like to read much" continued immediately with "but you know the one book I LOVED..." and, well, guess what they said. It NEVER FAILS. It's really sort of odd. Of course, it's also the Ultimate Teen-Angst-Fed-Up-With-Everyone-and-everything-in-the-Universe-including-even-mentioning-how-fed-up-I-am Novel. I introduced it as such to a class of 8th graders once while I was giving them a series of booktalks before they picked out books for a report, and immediately EVERY KID IN THE CLASS looked DIRECTLY at one girl, who then stood up and shouted "THAT ONE'S MINE!" That was definitely one of my better moments as a middle school librarian.

• Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village --guess technically this isn't a novel, but it won a Newbery so people want to know if you've read it or not anyway.

• Brainboy and the Deathmaster

• The cricket in Times Square
• Tucker's countryside

• The Invention of Hugo Cabret

• The five little peppers and how they grew

• The Giving Tree --so I have no idea why this book was listed in the Fiction section of the Peters Township library instead of the picture book section, but because I HAVE read it and it IS a wonderful book, I figured I might as well leave it in. But what about The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, which is quite possibly my favorite? Not to mention all the books of poetry. But of course, none of these is really a novel, and as such, why would it be on this list?

• Interstellar pig --read this book for (guess what) an YA lit class and quite enjoyed it, and I specifically remember seeking out MORE William Sleator to read, but apparently I never actually READ any more....

• A tree grows in Brooklyn

• The austere academy
• The bad beginning
• The carnivorous carnival
• The end -- I have to say that awaiting this book had me a little worried there-- I mean, by definition, A Series of Unfortunate Events couldn't have a HAPPY ending, could it? But I found the ending pretty satisfying. Except that I still don't know what happened to the Quagmire triplets.
• The ersatz elevator
• The grim grotto
• The Hostile Hospital
• The miserable mill
• The penultimate peril --A HOTEL ORGANIZED BY THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM. This rocks my entire universe. Actually I have to say that my universe is fairly well rocked by the level of importance and prestige libraries are given in the entire series... After all, The World is Quiet Here.
• The reptile room,
• The slippery slope --I particularly loved this one too
• The Unauthorized Autobiography,
• The vile village-- and also this one
• The wide window

• Memo; to myself when I have a teenage kid

• The Egypt game
• The Famous Stanley kidnapping case --I really liked the books about the Stanleys and friends (see books with * s), but no one else ever seems to know about them-- at least as much as they know about The Egypt Game.
• The Gypsy game
• The Headless Cupid *
• Janie's private eyes *
• Libby on Wednesday
• The Trespassers
• The Unseen
• The Witches of Worm *

• Two Minute Mysteries --on the other hand, what's with these two books being shelved under fiction? They were in nonfiction in MY library. Under The Criminal Justice System. Seriously they were.
• More Two Minute Mysteries

• Calico captive
• The Sign of the beaver
• The witch of Blackbird Pond --another one of my Good moments as a middle school librarian was having recommended this book to a girl who thenseafter gushed and worshipped and refused to return this book for over a month or so. Finally she gave in, after deciding that she could buy her own copy and horde it all she liked without me bugging her to return it. I was happy to be of service.

• Maus : a survivor's tale,
• Maus: a survivor's tale II: and here my troubles began

• The Library card --well, my finest COLLECTIVE success of middle school librarianship was deciding to read this book out loud to the sixth grade to start off the year. They were three horrible nasty classes, but as soon as I started to read... they were all with me. Every last one.
• Loser
• Maniac Magee --just a fine, fine book indeed. Sometimes books REALLY TRULY DESERVE their Newbery. Also: Amanda and her suitcase of books = ROCK.
• Space station seventh grade
• Who put that hair in my toothbrush?

• The Pearl,
• The red pony.

• The photographer

• Happily After All

• Treasure Island - I CANNOT help seeing the Muppet version when I read this. Sad, I know.

• The mysterious Benedict Society-- Four kids--two boys, two girls, one of the boys is the main viewpoint character and the other is inexplicably named after a U.S. president-- use their unique talents to save the world from a brainwashing plot: you guessed it, it's The Incredible Adventures of Four Teens Who are More Than they Appear! No, I'm kidding, it's this book. Well, it's both those books, but THIS book is basically Ian Schafer with younger characters, SERIOUSLY, it's a bit freaky, and of course it's also BETTER than my book so I feel totally unoriginal. Okay, there's a lot of weird little coincidences, but on the whole they are two totally different books, so I won't beat up on myself too much. Oh yeah, and the day I realized Reynie was named after Fox Mulder was a very happy day for me. The Truth is Out There.

• Blind date,
• Bad dreams,
• Haunted,
• I saw you that night,
• Lights out,
• The new girl,
• Secret admirer,
• The Babysitter,
• The baby-sitter II,
• Curtains,
• Dead end,
• Silent night,
• Ski weekend
• The sleepwalker,
• Truth or dare,
• Wrong number

• Thursday's child

• Gulliver's travels --so does anybody else in the world actually think this book sucks? Doesn't the narrator sound so freakin' stuck on himself? Isn't Jonathan Swift way too amused by potty humor? I don't know. I thought so.

• The Joy Luck Club --this is another book that I picked up solely because the author's name was Amy, but I really enjoyed it, too. I especially liked the story about the girl who got out of a too-early arranged marriage through a really clever story about a nightmare. That's probably the only one I remember now, though.

• Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree

• All on a winter's day

• Roll of thunder, hear my cry --and my cry could certainly be heard. I cried, and cried, and absolutely bawled the first time I read this (about 8th grade). Then I got in college and had to read it again for class, at which I informed everyone that I'd completely forgotten anything that had HAPPENED in the book, but I surely, completely remembered how hard I'd cried. So I read it again and cried again. Now today I STILL don't remember most of what happened (but more than I did), but I definitely remember that I cried.

• Author! author!

• Molly Donnelly

• Rats saw God --I read this book in library school's YA lit class and the main character reminded me of a friend of mine from undergrad, and his girlfriend reminded me of HIS girlfriend, so when they broke up in the book I took it really personally until I remembered that this was a book and not actually my friend.

• The New Policeman
• The Last of the High Kings

• A good courage

• The hobbit, or, There and back again --I got this book for Christmas in 8th grade, and to myself I was like, "hmm, how into a book whose main character is a fussy middle-aged man (albeit a very short man with hairy feet) am I ACTUALLY going to GET?" But by the time I was playing Scattergories with my cousin that afternoon and got "Fictional Character starting with B," I could pull out quite a cool 2-pointer, and felt quite pleased with myself. And even told my cousin that it was turning out to be a pretty swell book.
• The lord of the rings --so I found out my dorky new Dungeonmaster boyfriend (now husband) had never read this, but of course the more I insisted that he couldn't possibly be a Fully Knowledgeable Dungeonmaster unless he read The Ultimate Epic Fantasy, the more he refused to read it. Then we went to a movie and a certain preview came on for the first time. Jason stared numbly at the screen, and finally mumbled, "...massive orc armies...." After the movie we wandered into the bookstore, where Jason immediately picked up a fancy hardcover three-in-one volume of The Lord of the Rings and bought it. "You know I have those in paperback," I pointed out. "Yeah, but it's a GOOD book, isn't it? We'll want a good quality copy to keep." And wouldn't you know our next D&D campaign somehow coincidentally required us to destroy a ring of power? Go figure, no idea where he got THAT idea. Anyway, then of course we did end up going to see the movies. Those movies are probably the only movies I adore as much as or even possibly more than I love the books. The movies are a lot more concise, and don't have the anticlimatic freakin' long ending that the books have (you can tell the movie reviewers who haven't read the books because they're the ones who complain that the ending of the movie was long)... the books on the other hand have more of the love story between Eowyn and Faramir which I always loved primarily because Faramir's courtship attempts were so curiously similar to Jason's. Also because Eowyn rocks. She was my second favorite character after Sam. And Pippin was my third favorite, but in the movies Pippin is my second favorite and Eowyn is my third. Sam is still always first. You know there's quite a cult of fans who insist that Sam is the true hero of the story. I'm probably one of them. I should name my son Sam (edit, 2007: I did. And someday he will ask me why I always call him Samwise if his name is Samuel, and I do look forward to that day). Anyway.

• The forestwife

• Changes for Molly: a winter story
• Changes for Samantha: a winter story
• Happy birthday, Molly! A springtime story
• Happy birthday, Samantha! A springtime story
• Meet Molly : an American girl,
• Molly learns a lesson: a school story
• Molly saves the day: a summer story
• Molly's surprise: a Christmas story
• Samantha saves the day: a summer story

• The adventures of Tom Sawyer --my parents claim that when I was first reading this book in 4th grade or whenever they caught me laughing out loud and got all pleased about me finding a "classic" so amusing. I have no recollection of laughing out loud. Not that I don't find the book amusing. In fact I'm rather a big fan of Twain in general.
• The adventures of Huckleberry Finn --One of my favorite sort-of-possible urban-legend facts is that Huck Finn was a distant relation of mine. (Of course this by default also means Huck Finn's DAD is also a distant relation of mine, but maybe we'll just ignore that.) Not HUCK exactly, but the childhood friend of Sam Clements upon whom the character of Huck was based. His name was Tom Blankenship and he actually grew up to become a judge in Montana or something like that, so he did all right for himself. I maintain that this theory is supported by the Blankenship family obsession with fishing.

• Bad girls
• Building blocks
• Come a stranger
• Izzy, willy-nilly
• Jackaroo --I LOVE this book. It SO rocks. And nobody ever seems to know it but me. It's harder to find too.
• On fortune's wheel
• Seventeen against the dealer
• Homecoming
• A solitary blue
• Sons from afar
• The Callender papers
• Dicey's song
• The Vandemark mummy
• The wings of a falcon

• Breakfast of champions : or, Goodbye blue Monday!
• God bless you, Mr. Rosewater
• Slaughterhouse-five

• Ferret in the bedroom, lizards in the fridge
• Trapped in Death Cave
• Upchuck and the Rotten Willy

• The Boxcar Children --so I might have read some of the mystery series that came out after this too, but I can't remember

• Earthborn,
• Who goes home?

• Dragons of winter night,
• Dragons of autumn twilight,
• Dragons of Spring Dawning

• Impossible

• The president's daughter
• White house autumn
• Long live the queen

• The strictest school in the world : being the tale of a clever girl, a rubber boy and a collection of amazing flying machines, mostly broken

• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

• By the shores of Silver Lake
• The First Four Years
• Little town on the prairie
• Little house on the prairie
• Little house in the big woods --I have totally all my life wanted to make maple candy in the snow. Never had the opportunity.
• The long winter --so I've always had this fantasy of getting totally snowed in somewhere, "you know, like in The Long Winter!" Because I always seem to forget that they were miserable most of the time.
• On the banks of Plum Creek --this was my favorite, anyone else agree?
• These happy golden years

• The golden hour

• Before Green Gables -it felt like fanfiction, which I guess, technically, it IS.

• The Castle in the Attic - I loved this book when I was a kid. But at the same time I got really confused-- there was this scene where the main character was playing his recorder for the forest creatures, and all I could see was him pushing play on a boom box....

• Bat 6
• Make Lemonade
• Mozart season, The

• Mrs. Dalloway

• Avril Crump and her amazing clones

• Dealing with dragons,
• Searching for dragons,
• Calling on dragons -- too many talking cats for my taste
• Sorcery and Cecelia, or, The enchanted chocolate pot --Oh yeah. This book sort of goes on the premise: "What if Jane Austen wrote a fantasy/suspense story in letter form?" Actually it's cowritten by --another person whose name I forgot to write down-- and they each took one of the characters and actually wrote real letters to each other back and forth in character, and that's how they wrote the book. Which is just cool. I need to try that sometime.

• Christina's ghost
• The Dollhouse murders --this was one of the BEST elementary school mysteries ever. It also reminds me of another dollhouse book called "When the Dolls Woke" that is obviously not written by any author in the PT library-- someday I'll fix this list to accomodate such titles. I wonder if my elementary school has an online catalog yet. I mean that can be accessed from the Internet.
• Ghosts beneath our feet
• The Secret window
• The Midnight mystery

• Millicent Min, girl genius --this book is so cute; and yeah, it's a relief to read about someone who's actually a bigger nerd than me.
• Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time
• So Totally Emily Ebers

• Dragonwings --I did a very cool project on this book for kiddie lit class. It was very extensive. But I drew a really awesome Chinese dragon if I must say so myself.

• Briar Rose --I can NEVER EVER think of Sleeping Beauty in the same way again after this book. It will always be an allegory about the Holocaust forever after.
• The Devil's arithmetic --and this is definitely one of the better Holocaust books in history, also.
• Here there be dragons
• Sword of the rightful king: a novel of King Arthur --I keep seeing this book in the library and forgetting I read it until I pick it up and read the inside. So apparently it wasn't the most MEMORABLE of Arthurian titles.
• Twelve impossible things before breakfast: stories

• The Secret of the Tree House

• the Pigman

Sign my Guestbook View my Guestbook

go home!
go to my blog!
go to the music page home!

created 2006, updated 2007, by Amy, who thinks you need to know this.