Great books for young people?

[Blood Jester]

Great one. I read those in high school, but I think it would be apropriate for a younger read as well.

Did you like the second series The Mallorean. I didn't like it. It seemed to be a rehash of old material. I didn't see anything new. What did you think?

The Mallorean was a disappointment for me, but not totally awful. I thought he did much better with The Elenium, Sparhawk is an interesting character, and the series is a little darker than the others ('darker' being a very relative term).

 

[Emiricol]

SemperJase, your lists matches mine. Some of my most fond memories are of the 2nd grade reading the Dard is Rising series

Other good ones for younger readers include anything by Robert Aspirin, and for the sappy type, 9-13 maybe, the Marion Zimmer Bradley series (Darkover? It's been a long while... I think that's the series)

 

[FriendlyFiend]

Well, this lot should get anyone through childhood:

Brothers Grimm - Fairy Tales
Lewis Carroll - Alice through the Looking Glass/Hunting of the Snark
Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth
Lloyd Alexander - The Chronicles of Prydain
Phillip Pullman - His Dark Materials Trilogy
Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising Sequence
Roger Lancelyn Green - Myths of Ancient Egypt/Myths of the Norsemen/The Adventures of Robin Hood/King Arthur and His knights of the Round Table &c
MR James - Complete Ghost Stories *
Edgar Allen Poe - Complete Tales

(* tho' if this doesn't give them nightmares I don't know what will)

 

[Meds]

I think somewhere around age 10, I was reading and re-reading these:
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Talking Parcel by Gerald Durrell (sadly OOP)
and I was probably still reading (though I'm sure I wouldn't have admitted it to my buddies at the time):
Winnie The Pooh by A.A.Milne

 

[FriendlyFiend]

Ah - the Talking Parcel! Forgotten that one. Not only was it the first book that made me laugh out loud, it's also the first place I came across a cockatrice (after that, what choice was there but to end up playing D&D?). Terrible to discover it's out of print.

 

[Doppleganger]

Do really really young people's books count?

I think my earliest taste of D&D-esque influences must have been things such as:

* Dr. Seuss- Loved those wacky geometrical worlds and hordes of bizarre creatures.
* Where the Wild Things Are- I vaguely remember it being something about various cool-looking creatures in an alternate dimension that morphs out of a boy's room.
* Babaar- Kings and kingdoms filled with elephant people, etc
* Tintin- Lots of wild adventures involving the exploration of exotic locations full of unique cultures, creatures, and artifacts.

Leaving the picture-dominated-book era, I can remember the Chronicles of Narnia being one good read of course, and I also really liked some other cool series (probably less D&D oriented) about uh... Tripods?? ... or something like that, anybody remember what series that was called?

 

[reutbing0]

The Mallorean was a disappointment for me, but not totally awful. I thought he did much better with The Elenium, Sparhawk is an interesting character, and the series is a little darker than the others ('darker' being a very relative term).

I always felt that the stories of David (& Leigh never forget her) depend almost primarily on the characters. Yes Eddings tells the same story twice, but there is an explanation for that. And I didn't care, I just wanted to get to know these characters better.

For young readers I should add Roald Dahl to the list.

 

[johnsemlak]

Loads of my childhood favs have already been mentioned, but one of my favorites was The House with A Clock in its Walls, by John Bellairs. It's a great fantasy set in the modern world.

Bellairs wrote other fantasy books with the same character, but I never read them.

I've wanted to make a D&D adventure based on the novel. The premise is pretty good; easily convertible.

 

[Doppleganger]

For young readers I should add Roald Dahl to the list.

Oh yeah good call, I forgot about James and the Giant Peach and all those (I actually did run a group through a D&D adventure loosely based on that book once).

Also that whole book series about the Mouse that drove a toy car was great too. Ahhh, the idyllic memories of childhood.

 

[Blood Jester]

...The Talking Parcel by Gerald Durrell (sadly OOP)...

Is that the same Gerald Durrell who ran a Zoo in Jersey (Britain, not US) and wrote many books about his travels collecting animal specimens for his and other zoos? If so that was one of my favorite authors when I was 10~11. Actually, he still sits in the top 5, at least.