This post is dedicated to my mom. As a middle school librarian, she takes it upon herself to be up on what books are out there for her kids, so she frequently reads juvenile/young adult fiction. She readily admits that she enjoys a lot of it. I remember for a while she was all about a book called The Giver, and then later it was the Harry Potter series (which Dad and Amy also got sucked into, while Grace and I stayed sane and strong).

In my senior year of college at UF I took a juvenile fiction course to fulfill an English credit for my TESL minor, and I really enjoyed some of those books. It was my first time reading Catcher in the Rye, and I loved it. I was also quite impressed with I am the Cheese.

Years later, I’m in China, and I find myself once again interested in juvenile fiction. Interactions with Illy, a fan of artists Edward Gorey, reminded me of an author I liked growing up named John Bellairs. My mom probably wouldn’t have wanted me reading those books if she had known what they were about. The books all related to the occult, and were quite creepy and thoroughly enjoyable. John Bellairs evidently has some Catholic background, as Catholicism was frequently the force that had power over the evil forces the protagonists encountered, and I identified with that as well.

Anyway, when I ordered some books from Amazon last year, I got a book consisting of a collection of John Bellairs’ first three novels. I’ve read one so far, and it was a fun, quick read.

I was reminded of another series of books from my adolecence by the recent remake of War of the Worlds. This Tripod series began with a title called The Day the Tripods Came. I forget how old I was when I read it, but this book really kind of freaked me out because of the way the aliens invaded. Long before the tripods landed, there was a weird TV show that commanded a huge following. It actually served to brainwash a huge section of the population so that there was much less resistance when the tripods arrived. The series then chronicles the fall of mankind to the tripods, and the struggles of the free human resistance movement.