Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Top Ten Underrated Books for Kids and Teens

It's Top Ten Tuesday over at The Broke and the Bookish!  Today's topic is underrated books.  This took some thought.  I tried to focus on books that I loved that I didn't hear much buzz about - the kind of books I want to tell everyone about!  If you are interested in my list of underrated grown-up books, check out Book By Book.

Here is my Top Ten List of Underrated Books for Kids and Teens:

  1. The Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence – picture Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys in Ancient Rome – a great series, but I don’t hear much about it here in the U.S. They made it into a popular TV show in the U.K.
  2. The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins – obviously, everyone went totally crazy for her series The Hunger Games but this earlier middle-grade series seems to get overlooked.  Our whole family loved it (we read it aloud).
  3. Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes Courter – I always felt this stunning YA memoir about foster care didn’t get enough attention when it came out.
  4. Lionboy trilogy by Zizou Corder – this amazing middle-grade series about a boy who can communicate with lions kept my whole family rapt, but I didn’t hear much buzz about it.
  5. Things Not Seen and its sequels by Andrew Clements – Clements’ popular books for younger kids get lots of attention, but we also loved this foray into teen fiction about a boy who wakes up one morning to find himself invisible.
  6. Alabama Moon by Watt Key – one of our family’s all-time favorite middle-grade read-alouds.  A local bookstore owner told my husband about it; otherwise, we hadn’t heard of it before or since.
  7. The Cronus Chronicles by Anne Ursu – Percy Jackson gets all the attention, but Ursu’s fabulous middle-grade series about two teens who get caught up in the affairs of Greek gods are action-packed, exciting, and sprinkled with a great sense of humor.
  8. The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt – I loved this first book in a new mystery series with teen girl detectives tangled up with international art thieves.  Perfect for girls who love (or who’ve outgrown) Nancy Drew.
  9. Icecore and Goldstrike by Matt Whyman – exciting, techno-thrillers for teens that my son, husband, and I all loved, but I didn’t hear much else about them.
  10. Boom! By Mark Haddon – this hilarious British sci-fi adventure from the author of the adult novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time kept our whole family laughing through a very long day stuck in traffic.

So, those are my picks.  How about you?  What are your favorite underrated books for kids and teens?

4 comments:

Anne@HeadFullofBooks said...

Is BOOM newly published. I haven't even heard of it. I guess that is the beauty of this Top Ten List, huh. I'm heading over to Amazon.com right now to find out more about it.

Anne
My Head is Full of Books

Jordyn said...

I SO need to read Things Not Seen. I love Clements yet have never picked up his YA for some reason.

Check out my Top 10.

Sue Jackson said...

Anne - I think Boom is an older book that was re-released last summer. We loved it on audio - great British humor and a wacky plot.

Sue

Sue Jackson said...

Jordyn -

We all loved it (that's me, my husband, and our sons who were 12 and 15 at the time). We listened to the first book on audio, then I read the next two books. It's an intriguing plot but also well-written with in-depth characters.

Sue