melannen | FMK #34: Chapter Books

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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

View Respondents

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

F
10 (66.7%)

M
2 (13.3%)

K
3 (20.0%)

Travelers by Night by Vivien Alcock (1990)

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)

F
7 (38.9%)

M
6 (33.3%)

K
5 (27.8%)

The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt (1969)

F
9 (52.9%)

M
6 (35.3%)

K
2 (11.8%)

Matilda Bone by Karen Cushman (2000)

F
7 (50.0%)

M
4 (28.6%)

K
3 (21.4%)

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

F
7 (53.8%)

M
2 (15.4%)

K
4 (30.8%)

Rumble Fish by S. E. Hinton (1975)

F
8 (61.5%)

M
3 (23.1%)

K
2 (15.4%)

Adventures of the Blue Avenger by Norma Howe (1999)

F
6 (54.5%)

M
1 (9.1%)

K
4 (36.4%)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (2007)

F
3 (27.3%)

M
3 (27.3%)

K
5 (45.5%)

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

F
8 (50.0%)

M
6 (37.5%)

K
2 (12.5%)

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

F
7 (46.7%)

M
3 (20.0%)

K
5 (33.3%)

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

F
11 (73.3%)

M
3 (20.0%)

K
1 (6.7%)

The Silver Cup by Constance Leeds (2007)

F
9 (75.0%)

M
2 (16.7%)

K
1 (8.3%)

Bill Bergson, Master Detective by Astrid Lindgren (1968)

F
6 (50.0%)

M
3 (25.0%)

K
3 (25.0%)

Anna Smudge, Professional Shrink by MAC (2008)

F
4 (40.0%)

M
1 (10.0%)

K
5 (50.0%)

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (1987)

F
7 (36.8%)

M
6 (31.6%)

K
6 (31.6%)

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

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)

F
5 (50.0%)

M
1 (10.0%)

K
4 (40.0%)

The Witch's Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff (1970)

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)

F
9 (52.9%)

M
1 (5.9%)

K
7 (41.2%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hatchet is the worst kind of Boy's Fiction For Boys since Jack London.

It *should* be something I adored as a kid, because I was all about Kids Must Survive In Wilderness Alone, and a bunch of my friends loved it, but for some reason I was turned off by it. Maybe because it came off even then as being a BOY BOOK FOR BOYS? I don't even remember at this point!

Hatchet has AU in various ways sequels! Except not exactly sequels because Things Happened Differently.

I remember those! I think I was still young and innocent enough at the time to be BETRAYED that it DIDN'T MATCH, though (I also could not handle film adaptations of books.)2

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)

I do like Jack London! Like I said, I *should* have loved Hatchet. IDK, it's possible I started just far enough to hit the off-putting bit and didn't get any farther.

I also have this vague memory that everybody who told me about it focused on how TOUGH and DANGEROUS it was and ONLY HIS FATHER'S HATCHET let him SURVIVE until RESCUE, and I was like "pfff, did Sam Gribley just angst about his dad until he was rescued? Did Mary and Jean Wallace? Did the ROBINSONS? NO, and they had families and/or baby animals to take care of too! Sounds like it has too many feelings, not enough building houses. Must be a boy book."

But that was twenty years ago and I never actually read the thing, so....

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.

Good to know! I would probably enjoy it then if it's 90% building houses.

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.

...or it could have just been "eeewww, my sister loved it."

You are so right it is like the opposite of left.

It's like my whole childhood in a list! You even have a McGurk book!!!!

I was so amazed when I was putting my collection in LT and the McGurk books seemed to be, like, super-rare? Because when I was a kid they seemed like one of those ubiquitous series that was everywhere in every library! Since then I've been buying them as I find them used and they are, indeed, super-rare. WEIRD. Maybe they were only ever available through school library suppliers and Weekly Reader?

Did you read the Ghost Squad books by the same author? It's aimed a little bit older and I love it so much and that one was hard to find even when I was a kid.

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.

Huh! Maybe it was just my local library system? (No individual library had them all, but between two school libraries and three or four public ones I could get to regularly, I think I managed to read quite a few of them. But no individual library ever had all of ANY series, no matter how popular, so that didn't stand out to me.)

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.

I had one Cam Jansen book as a kid and REALLY LOVED IT, I think because it had that sort of humor where the author invites the kid reader to join him in eye-rolling at the follies of the adults. (also, Rum Raisin and Lemon ice cream!) They've started putting out new ones in the last ten years or so, though, and those are way more sincere and not nearly as good, based on the one I picked up at work. (I can't imagine them working for a movie, though. There wasn't a *whole lot* there.)

I also have read other Cushman and Korman and Three investigators and like them! (A lot of the ones on this list are ones I own due to residual fondness but never finished the series, actually.) I have no memories of Adrian Mole, though, and don't quite remember why I picked it up, unless somebody was recommending it on DW.

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.

Most of these will probably take me well under an hour, which is partly why it seemed like a good choice this round. (except, of course, the one that's currently winning, I can count on y'all for that...)

I think I read Outsiders by Hinton when I was a kid and it was... okay, but not what I was interested in? And also that was another author my sister really liked. I have slightly less restrictive tastes now, though (and things that I was probably a little to young to read at the time I read them are no longer).

Wimpy Kid is still SUPER popular at the library (and so many similar rip-offs....)

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.

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.

I have read those of Cushman's that came out while I was still the age they were marketed to! I lost track after that, though. Good to hear that the later ones are still good.

I liked Tuck Everlasting (which I read as an adult) but don't know if I'd like any of her others.

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.)

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!

I have one other sitting around! "The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon", which was the only one I had as a kid, so it is not unread. The dragon in that one wasn't a real dragon, though. Is the ghost in Green Ghost actually a REAL GHOST? That does seem like a departure from the rest of the series - I got they were more about debunking the supernatural mysteries.

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??

You never know in the 60s!

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.

The one I had, I mostly remember really liking the sense of place in it - both the junkyard clubhouse, but also the mystery had a lot to do with the geology and history of the Pacific coastline, IIRC, and I loved it a lot.

But that's a series with a really long and complicated publishing history, so yeah. I was a little past the prime of their original popularity in the US so I never found very many.

If you ever want to hear my anti-Hatchet rant, I could take it out and dust it off!

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