melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2018-01-16 10:16 pm
Entry tags:

FMK #34: Chapter Books

Last week's F winner was the Asimov! The K winner was a multiple-item tie, but the Hamilton had the least number of non-K votes, so it goes.

Over the weekend, instead of catching up on my reading, I wrote a javascript toy that lets me take any arbitrary list and rank it using pairwise comparisons. I feel like this was a good life choice and thus I can tell you that my subconscious definitely, clearly, mathematically provably wants this week's poll to be kids' chapter books.

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)


Poll #19333 FMK #34: Young Readers
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33


Cam Jansen: The Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds by David Adler (1980)

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F
10 (66.7%)

M
2 (13.3%)

K
3 (20.0%)

Travelers by Night by Vivien Alcock (1990)

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F
8 (72.7%)

M
2 (18.2%)

K
1 (9.1%)

The Three Investigators: The Mystery of the Green Ghost by Robert Arthur (1965)

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F
7 (38.9%)

M
6 (33.3%)

K
5 (27.8%)

The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt (1969)

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F
9 (52.9%)

M
6 (35.3%)

K
2 (11.8%)

Matilda Bone by Karen Cushman (2000)

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F
7 (50.0%)

M
4 (28.6%)

K
3 (21.4%)

The Case of the Phantom Frog by E. W. Hildick (1975)

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F
7 (53.8%)

M
2 (15.4%)

K
4 (30.8%)

Rumble Fish by S. E. Hinton (1975)

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F
8 (61.5%)

M
3 (23.1%)

K
2 (15.4%)

Adventures of the Blue Avenger by Norma Howe (1999)

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F
6 (54.5%)

M
1 (9.1%)

K
4 (36.4%)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (2007)

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F
3 (27.3%)

M
3 (27.3%)

K
5 (45.5%)

The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg (1996)

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F
8 (50.0%)

M
6 (37.5%)

K
2 (12.5%)

Go Jump in the Pool! by Gordon Korman (1979)

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F
7 (46.7%)

M
3 (20.0%)

K
5 (33.3%)

Ishi, Last of His Tribe by Theodora Kroeber (1962)

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F
11 (73.3%)

M
3 (20.0%)

K
1 (6.7%)

The Silver Cup by Constance Leeds (2007)

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F
9 (75.0%)

M
2 (16.7%)

K
1 (8.3%)

Bill Bergson, Master Detective by Astrid Lindgren (1968)

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F
6 (50.0%)

M
3 (25.0%)

K
3 (25.0%)

Anna Smudge, Professional Shrink by MAC (2008)

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F
4 (40.0%)

M
1 (10.0%)

K
5 (50.0%)

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (1987)

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F
7 (36.8%)

M
6 (31.6%)

K
6 (31.6%)

We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea by Arthur Ransome (1937)

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F
12 (63.2%)

M
5 (26.3%)

K
2 (10.5%)

Ghost Twins #1: The Mystery at Kickingbird Lake by Dian Curtis Regan (1994)

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F
5 (50.0%)

M
1 (10.0%)

K
4 (40.0%)

The Witch's Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff (1970)

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F
11 (64.7%)

M
5 (29.4%)

K
1 (5.9%)

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend (1977)

View Answers

F
9 (52.9%)

M
1 (5.9%)

K
7 (41.2%)


petra: Barbara Gordon smiling knowingly (Default)

[personal profile] petra 2018-01-17 03:57 am (UTC)(link)
Hatchet is the worst kind of Boy's Fiction For Boys since Jack London.
katherine: A line of books on a shelf, in greens and browns (books)

[personal profile] katherine 2018-01-17 06:57 am (UTC)(link)
Hatchet has AU in various ways sequels! Except not exactly sequels because Things Happened Differently.
rachelmanija: (Default)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2018-01-17 07:52 am (UTC)(link)
I liked it. Brian's a boy but I've read similar books with girls and liked those too. There's a mildly off-putting bit at the very beginning about his mother maybe having an affair or something like that, but it's like two pages and the entire rest of the story is about wilderness survival.

ETA: I also like Jack London. You can possibly use this to calibrate your likely response to Hatchet.
Edited 2018-01-17 07:59 (UTC)
rachelmanija: (Default)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2018-01-17 07:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Once Brian hits the wilderness, it's about 95% building houses, 5% angst. The hatchet is a big deal but not because his father gave it to him, it's because it's the only tool he has for ages and everything he manages to do stems from having it.
stellar_dust: Stylized comic-book drawing of Scully at her laptop in the pilot. (Default)

[personal profile] stellar_dust 2018-01-17 04:56 pm (UTC)(link)
It was required reading for me in like .. 6th grade? And I loved it (as you know). Since everyone in our class had to read it didn't really come across to me as A BOY BOOK at the time at all. I haven't picked it up in decades though.
jadelennox: a sign which reads "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS GORGEOUS LIBRARIANS"  (liberrian: girls girls girls)

[personal profile] jadelennox 2018-01-19 02:52 am (UTC)(link)
You are so right it is like the opposite of left.
seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)

[personal profile] seekingferret 2018-01-17 03:59 am (UTC)(link)
It's like my whole childhood in a list! You even have a McGurk book!!!!
seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)

[personal profile] seekingferret 2018-01-17 02:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I dunno, I think they were fairly rare even then for me? The various libraries I had access to often had two or three of the books, rarely was there much overlap in which ones, and certainly nobody else I knew actually read them.
rachelmanija: (Books: old)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2018-01-17 07:58 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, man, are these a blast from the past.

I remember absolutely loving Adrien Mole, which has a pretty hilarious unreliable narrator. I don't know how well it holds up but I still remember his liveblogged-before-liveblogging account of a disastrous school outing, and his ode to the girl he has a crush on, "Oh Pandora/I adore ya/I implore ye/don't ignore me."

I had to read Cam Jansen because it was under consideration for movie option. It was incredibly boring.

Cushman and Korman are great but I haven't read those particular books. I used to love The Three Investigators but probably you need residual childhood fondness to enjoy reading them as an adult.
the_rck: (Default)

[personal profile] the_rck 2018-01-17 01:31 pm (UTC)(link)
I voted F on the Cam Jansen mostly because it's likely to take less than twenty minutes to read. The whole series is aimed at the same reading level as, say, the Rainbow Magic books or the Magic Tree House books. It has the same simplicity of prose and sameness of plots from book to book (though likely not as bad as the Rainbow Magic series). But, basically, if you read one Cam Jansen book, you will have read them all.

Astrid Lindgren's Bill Bergson books are a lot of fun but are really hard to get in the US right now. I've been trying to find a copy of the second book (of three), Bill Bergson Lives Dangerously, for a couple of decades now, but every time I look online I wince at the prices. This one is a murder mystery with children. One of the main trio (the girl, of course) witnesses the murder and has some psychological issues over it (understated enough that I didn't actually understand them at 12). The impetus for trying to find the killer is that the girl might recognize them and that the killer knows who she is.

I loathe the Wimpy Kid books. The main character isn't atypical for his age (middle school), but the funny/terrible things that happen and that he does don't actually make him change at all. He never actually realizes that he's done something wrong. They're spectacular for certain types of reluctant readers 3rd-6th grades because the kids find them incredibly funny.

I have a kneejerk negative reaction to S.E. Hinton because those books were shoved at me repeatedly as a better alternative to the fantasy/SF that I preferred in the late 70s/early 80s. I don't know that they're actually bad; they're just, for me, symbolic of serious irritation.
the_rck: (Default)

[personal profile] the_rck 2018-01-17 09:02 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not surprised that the series is still popular. The style is engaging and funny and the sort of thing to sweep a kid up and keep them reading. I just-- I'm not generally into Lessons or Morals for novels aimed at kids, but I really desperately wanted the main character to get beyond the point of being completely surprised every time something he did actually had consequences.

Which is me having been in my 40s when I read the first one and therefore very much Not the Right Audience. I simply felt that I had to talk with my then six year old daughter when she read them to make sure she saw the connections between what the character did and what happened to him. The connections are there, but it's a breezy, first person narrative by a character who never sees how the things making him miserable result from things he chose to do.

The chances are that kids reading the books do spot the connections, but the character never stops digging.

It's a pretty common form of humor, but I loathe it equally in Looney Tunes or teen comedies where the character stumbles from humiliation to humiliation. I'd be a terrible audience for Punch and Judy or Commedia dell'Arte. A lot of not-me people find that sort of thing funny rather than horrifying.
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)

[personal profile] sophia_sol 2018-01-17 03:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Karen Cushman writes really good children's historical fiction and I want to read more of her stuff. Matilda Bone is one of the ones I have already read and it's GREAT. It features, among other things, a community of medieval female medical professionals.

I loved The Search For Delicious as a kid but I have no idea how well it stands up to reading as an adult.
the_rck: (Default)

[personal profile] the_rck 2018-01-17 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)
I remember the very end of The Search for Delicious and nothing much else about the book at all. Elementary school aged me liked the ending of that book much better than I did the ending of Tuck Everlasting which was very nearly a book-meets-wall moment because I felt utterly betrayed. I don't think that Tuck Everlasting really works well when you're in third or fourth grade because most kids that age are missing a couple of foundational ideas to make the ending seem right. (Looking back, I'm pretty sure it is right. I just still DNW it based on how angry I was then.)
snickfic: Buffy looking over her shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] snickfic 2018-01-17 03:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I dearly loved the Three Investigators series when I was a kid, but iirc The Green Ghost was my absolute least favorite because it had a supernatural component in it, which was a huge departure from the rest of the series. So I would recommend an F for different one in that series, if you have any others sitting around!
snickfic: Buffy looking over her shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] snickfic 2018-01-17 08:14 pm (UTC)(link)

Assuming I'm remembering the title correctly, that's the one that has astral projection in it. Maybe that counted as "not supernatural" in the 60s??

the_rck: (Default)

[personal profile] the_rck 2018-01-17 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't remember The Green Ghost specifically which might be a bad sign because I do remember some of them quite clearly. I'm trying to remember without going down to the basement, but I thought that all of the ones under the Robert Arthur name were early ones in the series. My memory is that the series was better at the point when the books still opened and closed with the boys meeting with Alfred Hitchcock.

I think the one that stuck with me the most was the one with 'Silver Spider' in the title. It wasn't really a mystery so much as a Ruritanian adventure which really didn't fit at all with the rest of the series but was something that small me thought was just amazing and ever so much more interesting than stuttering parrots or screaming clocks.

I remember buying some of the newer books in the series at one point for my younger brother (eleven years younger than I) and then reading one and finding it really terrible. I was relieved that, when I went back to the earlier books in the series, they still had clever puzzles and at least a smidgen of character depth.
jadelennox: Senora Sabasa Garcia, by Goya (Default)

[personal profile] jadelennox 2018-01-19 02:50 am (UTC)(link)
If you ever want to hear my anti-Hatchet rant, I could take it out and dust it off!