Oliver Barnfield- 

A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Series of Unfortunate Events was a huge part of my childhood. Ever since I read the first book, I was hooked. It had the perfect mix of humor and sinister undertones. The humor here was self-referential and quite enjoyable, and I loved all the mysteries present. I never even really grew out of the series, I re-read the books and found myself still enjoying it. It’s one of the few kids series like that. 

Evan Tucker-

Danny Dragonbreath: Danny Dragonbreath is more of an unknown kids book, yet it’s read nonetheless. It follows a Dragon that has a mom with weird cheekbones and Danny’s best friend, Wendell Elwood, the iguana. The book series follows these to (and later Suki the Salamander –the woman character who is “Whoa she’s a girl but she likes weird stuff that’s cookie XD” as they go on wacky adventures. Some of these adventures include: fighting werewolf hotdogs, saving jackalopes from extinction, or killing a dream wasp. I must admit, the writer of these books, Ursula Vernon, definitely got creative while writing these books. When I read these in third grade after the STAAR test, I was a happy camper. I was always mesmerized by the creative ideas paired with an odd art style that fit the theme of young middle schoolers going on strange adventures. Thinking of them now, however, some of the books seem… Weird. They will always be classics, but… Attack of the Ninja Frogs? Curse of the Were-Weiners? Case of the Toxic Mutants? Anyway, these books were a big part of my childhood… Especially the ghost one. I was obsessed with creepy stuff in third grade and the book No Such Thing as Ghosts I picked up at the library a lot.

DORK DIARIES: My sister was obsessed with this book series, being advertised as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but for girls! She used to read them to me on car rides, and I must sadly admit…

… I started to like them. Now, I see they’re painfully relatable, finishing off as a show like Monster High than someone’s life. The book series gets bad after the fifth book. REALLY bad. One mainly good memory that I have of these books is when my sister messaged the author, Rachel Renee Russell, and she got a written thank you and free bookmarks. I thought that was possibly the coolest thing ever. That’s all there is to say, but most readers by now have already passed the age of reading Dork Diaries. In fact, I would say the same to about every book on this list.

Andrew Watson-

Bailey School Kids: So essentially, this book was conspiracy theories for children. Most children’s book names are OK, sometimes even pretty good, but the concepts and titles were pretty cringe-worthy. “Werewolves don’t go to summer camp?” “Ghouls Don’t Scoop Ice Cream?” Whaaaaaat? SKELETONS DON’T PLAY TUBAS? How do you know? What if skeletons, are, in fact, huge fans of brass instruments? These book titles make no sense. And the stereotypes. Man, it’s like something out of Scooby Doo in here! Who assumes that jocks must always have a low IQ and think their math teacher is a vampire, or whatever contrived misunderstanding the author came up with this time? Also, the humor is trash. None of it is even funny! Like, I think these books must have started OK, but then an evil group known as BUSINESS SHARKS AND INVESTOR ANGELS made them probably go on to make about 100 more books. If you clearly start to run out of ideas at about book ten, why keep going to one hundred!? Really? I have a feeling that Book #25, Bigfoot Doesn’t Square Dance, was not made because the author wanted to tell a deep story. It’s all about the money, really. 

Animorphs: Kids turning into animals to stop a parasitic race from killing everybody on earth. That’s pretty much all there is too it, and yet these books were incredibly cool in elementary school. Also, the book covers had the kids transforming and the faces in between human and animal were pretty terrifying.

I can’t really have much anything else to say about this because I lost interest almost immediately.

Now for a slideshow of weird in-between transformations from the book covers.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Geronimo Stilton: So, essentially, a bunch of mice decided it would be a good place to live on the Island of Sodor from Thomas the Tank Engine. (Compare the two, really. It’s the smaller island to the left.) Anyways, Geronimo, this one dude who writes newspapers and books and goes on adventures despite being a huge coward. I don’t really remember most of it, but one thing that came to my head was that in the book… *Google Search* The Karate Mouse, he had to pee in a cup at one point, and couldn’t, and it got really uncomfortable for me. It really wasn’t funny. The adjectives in the text had these effects put on them as well to help kids understand them more, I guess. Nowadays, it’s just very irritating. Other than that, all the books were just about the same recycled plot. Geronimo would go on adventures with his cousin, nephew, sister, and literally anyone else, would go on an adventure something would go missing, or something would go wrong, usually, it was these two villains, Shadow, or these pirate people. The series had a whole plethora of useless characters, including a stupid detective rat. This lasted for… *Google Search* Wait what? At least SEVEN? *Google Search #2* TWO-HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR?! Two hundred and sixty-four books, ladies and gentlemen! I think we can come to the conclusion that the author no longer runs this operation, it’s only the greedy business sharks. But, aside from that, I did enjoy these books as a kid, because they weren’t tainted by the corporations yet, and didn’t include these awful characters yet. Aunt Sweetfur? Cruella von Cacklefur? Professor Von Volt? I really am hurting right now.