Teen Fiction

I was always too advanced for my age, but at twelve, i started to read the likes of Harry Potter, and classics such as Black Beauty, Animal Farm, the Silver Brumby (Elyn Mitchell), the Hobbit, Farthing Wood (Colin Dann)etc. Jacqueline Wilson does some maturer books, if i recall rightly, and Celia Rees and Garth Nix do some very good ones too. Hope that helps.

Ben - Malorie Blackman is very good. My two eldest girls have loved reading her work. Noughts and Crosses particularly.

I forgot to add Watership Down by Richard Addams, which was always good. His Plague Dogs is a bit more adult,however.

have a look here ben ... loads of books ... for my sins i am co-ordinating this award this year and so am inundated with books for this age group ... http://teenagefiction.wordpress.com/ look at the longlist ...

I think Melvin Burgess is good. Don't know if he's great writer, though - English teachers have told me he's rubbish. Also, in terms of the subject matter of something like Junk, in depends on the twelve-year-old whether it would be of interest/appropriate.

yes i just asked my daughter and she said ' well *i* was reading junk when i was that age' but in a tone which suggested i didn't recommend it to anyone else in case they are not as hardcore as her ...

Ooh fantastic stuff, thanks all. I'll let you know what I end up with. From a quick look Blackman seems perfect; maybe Noughts and Crosses along with something from Fish's list? I'm going to sound stupid here but I didn't know there was such a wealth of young adult / teen books out there. It's quite heartening, really. They wouldn't publish so many if they didn't sell, I guess. My daughter is four months so I've got a way to go before she's into teen fic. We've got 'Baby, touch' books which are cool (although I can't say those words without making it sound like an army-style order) and I read her Winnie-the-Pooh before bed. God, those stories are wonderful. Much appreciated! (oh - and hi Liana, hope you are well.) Enzo.. http://nano07.wordpress.com/

Winnie-the-Pooh! They are great stories! So funny....

Wow, Ben - it seems she was born only a few months ago...

noughts and crosses is a v good choice but also v popular so she might have read them already ... my daughter absolutely loved them ... the his dark materials trilogy are some of the best books i've ever read myself and we were pushing each other over in this house to get hold of the next one etc. also that film is coming out on weds ... my middle son (19) was saying 'can we go? can we go? those are the best books i've EVER read ... that bear fight's gonna be awesome' teen fic is a lively market these days - much more so that it used to be - seems like there's no shame in writing them anymore which there certainly used to be ...

I think 'Brother in the Land' by Robert Swindells should be compulsary reading for teens. We read it when I was about 14 or 15 but your gal should cope with it. I revisited the book as an adult and it is still very good! It is a post nuclear conflict novel and Swindells holds no punches just because the audience is younger. Depending on how ahead of her 12 years she is, all the standard set texts for GCSE are worth reading, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird spring to mind. However I am very wary of giving young people books that are too difficult for them in case it puts them off a particular author for life. Just because a 12 year old can read and comprehend something on surface level, if they can't grasp all the nuances and sub-texts they won't enjoy it. I read Maragaret Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale' when I was about 12 and it put me off her for years! jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

Just to be clear - the 12 year old isn't mine, she's a friend's. Lord of the Flies is a really good choice, I hadn't thought of that. Enzo.. www.thedevilbetweenus.com

In the case of TKAM, I don't think Harper Lee ever published another book - just the one, won the Pulitzer, and called it quits...I think.

When I were a lad we read Arthur Ransome whether we liked it or not. Kids today don't know they're born.

'In the case of TKAM, I don't think Harper Lee ever published another book - just the one, won the Pulitzer, and called it quits...I think.' But if you've only got one book in you... well what a book!

When I was a youngster the only good thing we found about Arthur Ransome was that one of his characters was called Titty. jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

Northern Lights was outstanding. The whole thing went downhill fast after that. When I was your daughters age I read all of the "Mallory Towers" series by Enid Blyton, but probably because I went to an all boys school and girls might as well have been martians to me. I also bought a few copies of "Bunty" and "Jackie". I couldn't reach the top shelf.

series of unfortunate events is good, bit short but it's got some nice humor. and harry potter a course. the inheritence series (erago, eldest) are good if she likes fantasy. that's it for me.

Give me the beat boys and free my soul! I wanna getta lost in ya rock n' roll and drift away. Drift away...

I had another look arout what i still have left from that age-Philip Pullman's Count Karlstein was very good, but was more horror than fantasy. Sebastian Rook's "Vampire Plagues" are also decent horror stories, and Jonathan Stroud's "Bartimaeus" series is a very gripping fantasy trilogy.