Poll of the Day > Best Childrens Book Series?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Series only, not standalone books.

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https://youtu.be/bUZMt1uHr4g

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The Boxcar Children

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Decoy77 posted...

The Boxcar Children

Oh yea I forgot that one! Well, it's a good one but I dunno, no anthropomorphic animals so..

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Bunnicula.

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Amelia Bedelia

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Depends on what age level you're talking about.

The Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix is cool even today, though a bit dark for most children. The setting really shines in this particular series. It's about necromancy cast via magic sounds, usually with bells (this is the worst summary of that series ever, I swear).

I liked Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens books when I was a kid. It's a found family/intuitive but unusual magic users requiring special education series. Her books definitely skew towards a female audience, but I think that most people can enjoy them.

Artemis Fowl series and His Dark Materials series, of course.

Tales From The Wyrd Museum series by Robin Jarvis is perhaps too dark but that one is good, too. Has some really gruesome deaths as the series goes on that I was NOT ready for as a kid (like nightmare fuel for a kid even compared to the Old Kingdom series, imo, there's something really visceral about the violence that crops up later on in these books). Lots of references to Norse mythology in this series.

The Redwall series springs to mind, though the books are REALLY formulaic, so I stopped reading them.

I really liked the book Green Rider by Kristen Britain, but the subsequent novels in the series declined in quality, imo. First book is about a girl trying to get an encoded warning delivered to her king while being tailed by a sniper who killed the previous messenger.

Edit: I forgot, I once met Susan Fletcher, who wrote the Dragon Chronicles series. It mostly revolves around the concept of the protagonists trying to protect dragons, which are an endangered and often poached species, as I recall. I liked those, though I didn't read them all.

I haven't read them, but my nephew liked the Wildwood series, which was written by Colin Meloy, the lead singer of The Decemberists.

Those are all books I read before I was a teenager, but I don't know that you'd consider them all to be children's books. I was a pretty advanced reader as a kid and went through a phase where everything was either too juvenile, way too dry for my age, or boring and/or full of shoddy romance which I hated.

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^I feel like youre talking about YA or middle-grade while I mean literal children's books.

Although its fair to ask age range, Im excluding stuff like Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See and a Very Hungry Caterpillar, and going above that. Like, excluding toddlers" lets say 6-10 range, especially 7 & 8

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Hardy Boys, obviously.

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Zeus posted...

Hardy Boys, obviously.

Youre right I shoulda included that

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MondoMan180 posted...

Although its fair to ask age range, Im excluding stuff like Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See and a Very Hungry Caterpillar, and going above that. Like, excluding toddlers" lets say 6-10 range, especially 7 & 8

Again, it's gonna depend on the kid's reading level. I read the Silmarillion in 7th grade so that should give you an idea of my atypical reading experience when I was young. *shrug* Circle of Magic, Wildwood, and Redwall still apply, and Artemis Fowl and Dragon Chronicles probably work, too.

I would say that Circle of Magic is probably the most solid bet to make for that age range, though.

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Serendipity

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either tales of magic, or the enchanted forest.

though I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the rings in 5th grade, so to me those are kids books...
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Either The Dark is Rising sequence or The Chronicles of Prydain

oh you meant little kids, I was gonna vote animorphs.

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Magic tree house or whatever it was called

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PMarth2002 posted...

oh you meant little kids, I was gonna vote animorphs.

Ok ok ok ok

*burns the whole rule book*

WE HAVE A F'ING WINNER!!
Animorphs!? Slay Queen! Yaaaas

I was a huge fan dude. Right up there with Goosebumps (which come to think of I should have included, but again more middlegrade than kids)

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For me, there's too many to name. I like ones with good lessons and happy endings.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Is_Rising_Sequence
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The Chronicles of Prydain are pretty awesome for a slightly older child.

Overall though, my vote goes to "Choose Your Own Adventure"

Goosebumps
Captain Underpants

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The Chuck Tingle Series

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The "Pigeon" series.

One of my very favorites from my own childhood that I suspect would be confusing and meaningless to kids today:

Micro Adventure

Sideways stories from wayside school and its sequels.

a new one recently came out and I legit as a grownup wanna read it

Sarcasthma posted...

The Chuck Tingle Series

Trans Wizard Harriet Porber And The Bad Boy Parasaurolophus
Trans Wizard Harriet Porber And The Theater Of Love



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As an adult reading the young kid books: Frog and Toad hands down from that list.

However, Mo Willems' books (Pigeon, Elephant and Piggie) are the 'new age' version of Frog and Toad. Clever absurdity.

And, you know, Dr. Seuss? (Certain recent censorship notwithstanding) Is the world really so different now that Dr. Seuss doesn't show up in the first 29 posts of a topic like this?

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Nancy Drew
Hardy Boys
Harry Potter
Redwall

The Henry series

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wpot posted...

And, you know, Dr. Seuss? (Certain recent censorship notwithstanding) Is the world really so different now that Dr. Seuss doesn't show up in the first 29 posts of a topic like this? Maybe it doesn't count as a series.

The interesting thing about Dr. Seuss is that, even though his books are always labeled as "children's books", I appreciate the clever wordplay and the flow of the poetry much more, as an adult.

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Metalsonic66 posted...

The interesting thing about Dr. Seuss is that, even though his books are always labeled as "children's books", I appreciate the clever wordplay and the flow of the poetry much more, as an adult.

I wasnt sure Dr Seuss was a series really, but yea I dunno why I added that qualifier in the 1st place

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MondoMan180 posted...

I wasnt sure Dr Seuss was a series really, but yea I dunno why I added that qualifier in the 1st place

It's a bit hard to tell with children's books: Frog and Toad has continuing characters, but no plots or anything else that would really makes it a "series". I think it's more about regular authors than "series" there, maybe...

Metalsonic66 posted...

The interesting thing about Dr. Seuss is that, even though his books are always labeled as "children's books", I appreciate the clever wordplay and the flow of the poetry much more, as an adult.

None of those who have tried to imitate him have really been able to match the quality of his rhyming and storytelling. Even as a kid I could tell that something about his stories was just catchier (not that I could have described what I meant at the time).

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https://youtu.be/l3w2MTXBebg

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Classic

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wpot posted...

None of those who have tried to imitate him have really been able to match the quality of his rhyming and storytelling. Even as a kid I could tell that something about his stories was just catchier (not that I could have described what I meant at the time).

As far as children-oriented poetry went, I preferred Shel Silverstein to Seuss.

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MICHALECOLE posted...

Sideways stories from wayside school and its sequels.

a new one recently came out and I legit as a grownup wanna read it

Oh i loved those books

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Lil_Bit83 posted...

Oh i loved those books

Thank you, Ive been waiting for somebody to quote me.

i think that I connected a lot with the humor in those books. I havent read them in a lifetime so I dont know how the hold up, but I have very fond memories.

Among the others here, I was also a fan of the McDonald Hall (Bruno and Boots) books.

Edit: Also the Clue book series based on the board game.

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The ninja series.

its a series of books about cartoonish ninjas that teach lessons.

they have things like lazy ninja helpful ninja unplugged ninja angry ninja etc.

the negative traits obviously are about controlling those emotions while the positive ones are promoted.

its basically like a bunch of smurfs in cartoonish ninja costumes that focus on behavior life lessons.

daniel tiger is also good but the tv shows are probably more of a factor than the print books.

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Choose Your Own Adventure

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Most of you kids are probably too young to remember the Micro Adventures series from the early 1980s. The stories were notable for including short BASIC programs that you could type into your computer. Some of the programs were deliberately "broken" so that you had to "fix" them, or programs that you needed to "hack" to gain access to a system, all as part of the story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Adventure

Someone has digitized some of the books and provided a BASIC emulator so you can experience these adventures.

https://auri-microadventure.azurewebsites.net/

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faz posted...

Edit: Also the Clue book series based on the board game.

Those were really good

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