Category Archives: YA Classic

Quintessential Diana Wynne Jones: Archer’s Goon is about a boy, a family, a town and a threatening goon who takes up residence in the kitchen

Archer’s Goon is classic Diana Wynne Jones with various mysteries and characters gradually converging. The arrival of the Goon in Howard and Awful’s kitchen, demanding mysterious payment in the form of written words from their author-father, leads them to the … Continue reading

Posted in 10 years and up, 11 years and up, 13 years and up, 20th Century Children's, Adventure, British, Children's Classic, Comedy, Fantasy, Fiction, Novel, Speculative Fiction, YA Classic, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Deadly lizards, delinquent boys, a sinister warden and a whole lot of HOLES feature in Louis Sachar’s acclaimed YA novel

When Stanley Yelnats gets caught holding a celebrity’s stolen sneakers which have just fallen on him out of the sky, he knows that it’s because of the family curse acquired by his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather. Stanley is sent to Camp Green Lake, … Continue reading

Posted in 10 years and up, 20th Century, 20th Century YA, Adventure, American, Coming of Age/Rites of Passage, Family Drama, Fiction, Light Fiction, Novel, YA Classic, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A powerful book about growing up and making sense of the world that I first read while I was growing up: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I first read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in year 10 and it was the first really decent book I got to read for high school english (the junior syllabus really wasn’t inspiring – in year 8 we had … Continue reading

Posted in 20th Century, 20th Century Literature, American, Classic, Coming of Age/Rites of Passage, Fiction, General adult audience, Novel, Uncategorized, YA Classic, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith begins “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink” and is the delightful story of an impoverished family living in a crumbling castle in the early 20th century. It has a delightful cast … Continue reading

Posted in 13 years and up, 20th Century YA, Comedy, Coming of Age/Rites of Passage, Diarial, Fiction, Light Fiction, Novel, Romance, YA Classic, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment