Top Ten Tuesday #419

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these! I had a bit of a jam packed week last week, as I mentioned in my last post, I went to a press night at Southwark Playhouse for the show Blanket Ban and it was a really great show (even if I was super awkward and not so great at the whole mingling and networking afterward thing!). The review is now live on the Indiependent so if you’re interested in the writing that I do outside of this blog and you want to give it a read, then you’re very welcome to.

As I also mentioned in my post last week, my parents and I were away this bank holiday weekend, we went to the Cross Country day at the Badminton Horse Trials and it was fantastic! It’s been a good ten years or so since I last went to a three day event (the last time was Cross Country at Burghley with my sister which I think was in 2013) so it was really nice to get to do that again and to get to watch the amazing horses and riders at Badminton. It was an extremely muddy walk round due to all the rain over the weekend but I still had an amazing time. We stayed in Marlborough on the Friday and Saturday before heading to Badminton on the Sunday and despite the terrible weather on the Saturday, we had a nice time there, there was a lovely independent bookshop called The White Horse which I had a great time exploring and yes buying a couple of books from. We also had some really great tapas at a local restaurant called Tipi Tapa on the Saturday night. This week is set to be much quieter, but I do have a few fun things planned this weekend, the bimonthly conversation night at Battersea Spanish (where I do evening classes) on Friday night and then I’m going to see Cabaret on Saturday, after finally finding somewhat not extortionately priced tickets after almost two years (and really wanting to see Aimee-Lou Wood as Sally) so hopefully that will be just as amazing as everyone says it is.

Anyway, as it’s Tuesday, I have another Top Ten Tuesday for you all, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. We’re supposed to be doing Books I Recommend To Others The Most this week, but I feel like after almost 420 TTTs, you guys probably already know the books that I’m constantly recommending! So instead, I thought I’d twist it a little: I see a lot of parents on Twitter asking for book recommendations for their pre-teens/young teenagers (around the 11-15 age group) so I thought it might be fun to do a consolidated list of recommendations for readers in that age category. Do bear in mind that I was in this particular age group from the late 00s to mid 2010s and I wanted to pick my favourites from when I was 11-15, so these won’t be the most up to date releases and I’m sure there are other bloggers out there who could probably do a better job with recommending current MG/younger YA books than I can, but there will be quite a few big popular series that are still going strong today on this list because I read quite a lot of those as a pre-teen/young teenager:

1. Percy Jackson and The Olympians series-Rick Riordan

Okay, so full disclosure, usually when I see tweets from parents on Twitter asking for book recs for their pre-teens/young teenagers, they’re normally saying that their kid loved Percy and want recommendations for other series like it, so I don’t think Percy Jackson would be a new recommendation to most parents or their teenagers! However, it felt wrong not to include it here because both Percy Jackson and The Heroes of Olympus were a huge part of my teenage reading years and I was utterly obsessed with the series as a teenager. I borrowed almost all the books from a friend at school (the library only had the first one) and I think I was coming back asking for a new one pretty much every week!

2. Skulduggery Pleasant series-Derek Landy

This is always my go-to whenever parents are asking for something that is similar to Percy Jackson because Derek Landy’s style of humour is quite similar to Rick Riordan’s so I feel like Skulduggery would appeal to the same audience as Percy and also because I just really loved both series as a teenager. Skulduggery is definitely darker than Percy, particularly in the later books, but it has a lot of magic, humour and action so I definitely think it ticks a lot of the same boxes. The more recent Skulduggery books (from 10 onwards) are maybe more geared toward older teens but the first nine would definitely work for 11-15 year olds, and even then 10 onwards still work for the same age group, the writing isn’t any less accessible and the books aren’t any darker (I mean any darker than the original series, the later books do get quite dark), Valkyrie is just older. This is such a fun series and the original series of 9 books was a huge part of my teenage years, I found the first one in my school library when I was about 12 and the last book of the original series came out when I was 18, so they really bookended my teenage years and it’s one I will always recommend.

3. Artemis Fowl series-Eoin Colfer

Honestly, I kind of look at the first three series on this list almost as a group recommendation because they share a lot of similarities and I think appeal to broadly the same audience. Artemis Fowl is more of an anti-hero story than either Percy or Skulduggery but like the other two series, Artemis is funny, it’s a coming of age story where you get to see the main character grow up throughout the series, there’s a lot of magic and supernatural creatures, there’s action and adventure and honestly just a whole lot of fun. I borrowed these books from my school library and it’s one of those series where I was going back the instant I finished the latest instalment to get the next book. I was so sad when I got up to book 7 and my library didn’t have it, but thankfully my sister did! Artemis Fowl is one of those older series that it feels like isn’t talked about as much now, but if your teenager has burned through both Percy Jackson and Skulduggery, this is a really great place for them to go next.

4. A Series Of Unfortunate Events-Lemony Snicket

I don’t know if this one has had a resurgence of popularity with today’s teenagers because of the Netflix series, but it definitely deserves to have, it’s such a fun, quirky, weird series. It’s maybe more aimed for kids than teenagers, but since this list is covering recommendations for 11-15 year olds, I thought it fitted perfectly well here as it would be great for 11-12 year olds. I read the series when I was 11 I think, I used to go back to the library every week to get the latest instalments and they were so short I usually got three books from the series at a time. If your kid likes something darkly funny, quirky and offbeat, I’d definitely recommend A Series of Unfortunate Events for them (also if you are watching an adaptation, please watch the Netflix one and not the movie, it’s much more true to the spirit of the books!).

5. The Roman Mysteries Series-Caroline Lawrence

I never actually finished this series because they got super hard to find after around Book 10, but I did really enjoy the ones I read and it’s another series that I kept going back to the library to get week after week. Again this series is probably better suited for the younger age group of this post, so 11-12 rather than 13-15 who might find it a little too easy but it is a really fun series and great for kids who enjoy detective stories and are into their ancient history (it’s basically as it says on the tin, a group of kids solving mysteries in Ancient Rome). They’re not particularly similar in terms of plot, but I do feel like The Roman Mysteries may have been my gateway to Percy Jackson when I was older, even if they’re set in Ancient Rome rather than modern-day US with Greek mythology!

6. Heist Society-Ally Carter

This book (and the rest of the series) are so much fun! Ally Carter is great for pre-teens and younger teenagers, her books are a lot of fun, very accessibly written, and there’s not a huge amount of romance for those like I was as a teenager and not massively interested in the many romance plots in YA. There’s also quite a bit of action and great friendship dynamics between Kat’s crew which I know was something I loved a lot when I was 15/16.

7. Heartland Series-Lauren Brooke

These probably fall more into the 9-12 age category as they are really children’s books, but again as I was covering recommendations for 11-15 year olds here, there is some crossover! I was a horse obsessed child (who grew into a horse obsessed adult) so I was reading all of the pony books that I could get my hands on and these were some of my favourites. They are fairly simple and formulaic, each book follows Amy helping a different horse essentially but they were short and fun to read and they’re a nice bridge between young kids books and YA I think, so if you have a pony obsessed pre-teen, then these might be worth a shot (I only recently realised that this series was, at least in part, written by Linda Chapman who wrote the My Secret Unicorn and Stardust Spirits series that I loved as a really young kid!).

8. The Saddle Club series-Bonnie Bryant

Again, maybe more for the pre-teens than the older teenagers since as far as I can remember, they do read fairly young, but this was another series I loved when I was about 11/12. I never read all of them, there were like 100 books but I did love the ones I read and was again constantly borrowing them from the library so I could read about what escapades Lisa, Carole and Stevie got up to next. If you have a pony obsessed pre-teen or teenager, I definitely recommend this series, it’s a horse-girl classic!

9. The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants-Ann Brashares

Friendships are such a huge part of your life as a teenage girl and this was one book I read at that age that I felt really, truly GOT THAT. There is romance in the book but it’s far more about the girls’ own journeys in coming into themselves and whenever someone asks for a recommendation of a book with great female friendships, this is always one I reach for. I can’t remember how old I was when I read it, I think maybe 11 or 12, but I definitely think there’s a lot in here for teenagers to relate to as so much of it is about adolescent struggles and growing up.

10. Noughts and Crosses-Malorie Blackman

I did toy with whether or not to put this on because it does have some quite dark themes but I reread it a few years ago and there’s nothing in there that a 13-15 year old wouldn’t be able to handle, so I decided to include it. I think I was actually 11/12 when I first read this one and honestly it still lives rent-free in my mind, I would be hard pressed to name many books that had as big an emotional impact on me than this one. It’s also held up really well considering it came out over 20 years ago and so much of it is unfortunately still massively relevant to issues that we still have in society today with race and racism. I was massively gripped by Sephy and Callum’s story and it’s definitely one that I would still recommend to teenagers today, because it’s a) just a really great book and b) covers a lot of political and societal issues that are still super relevant to our society in a very accessible and entertaining way.

So there we go, those are some of my favourite books from when I was 11-15 that I would recommend for that age group! Have you read any of these books? What books did you love to read when you were a pre-teen/younger teenager? Let me know in the comments!

I’ll be back next week for another Top Ten Tuesday, we’re meant to be doing Things Getting In The Way Of Reading, but honestly, blogging and work wouldn’t exactly make for a very long list! So instead, I thought I’d go off the book track for a week, as I saw someone do a list of their favourite theatre shows and since I’ve been seeing a lot of theatre recently, I thought I’d do my own Favourite Theatre Shows of The Past Few Years (I’m being deliberately vague on few as I don’t particularly want to tie myself to a specific time as though I only really started going to the theatre with any kind of regularity when I moved back to London last year, I’ve still seen a lot of great shows and I don’t want to miss any out-nor do I want to tie myself down to a favourite theatre of all time list, hence the vague…past few years. Past few could be anything from like the last three years to five or more for me!