Teen Read Week listmania, 1

Last week, PBBY chair and librarians' sectoral rep Zarah sent this e-mail to the PBBY:

"I'm starting a blog carnival for Teen Read Week. I've invited friends and advocates of books and reading to list their top ten reads when they were teenagers. It's for my library blog and this will commence on the 17th being the start of Teen Read Week. It will end on the 23rd :-)"

Here are two lists from the PBBY, with Zarah's coming first.


Zarah Gagatiga's List (with annotations)

Books I Read as a Teenager

1. S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders — discovered this one from a schoolmate. I loved the theme on isolation and belonging that I asked my mom to check her library for books written by the author. She was successful! She borrowed That Was Then, This Is Now, Rumble Fish and Tex.

2. Richard Peck's Close Enough To Touch — a love story about a guy coping with his girlfriend's death. Like S.E. Hinton, I searched for books by Richard Peck and enjoyed The Unfinished Portrait of Jessica and one book he wrote that deals with teen suicide. Geez, I forgot the title. Just recently, I finished Peck's Here Lies the Librarian. Fabulous!

3.Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time — my first foray into sci-fi! After L'Engle, I read Bradbury and Asimov.

4. Judy Blume's Tiger Eyes — another crisis-coping themed book. Sigh. Now you have an idea how morose I was as a teen!

5. Katherin Patterson's Jacob Have I Loved — I liked this better than Bridge to Terabithia. What attracted me to the book was its cover. A girl holding a seashell. How sentimental! But the book blew my mind as I read the journey of the characters to self discovery. In the end, they grew up fine. At that point in my young adult life, I was so anxious of the future. The book gave me hope.

6. Harlequin and Mills and Boon Romances — yes. I read them.

7. Sweet Dreams and Sweet Valley High — a reader's rite of passage.

8. Erich Segal's Love Story — again, I read this novel because my classmates in high school were talking about it. So I borrowed the book from a classmate who found the copy in her aunt's old book shelf. We girls were so in love with Oliver. And by the end of the school year, we felt so confident like Jennifer, we could take on college smack in the face! Loved Segal's writing too!

9. Some required reading in college freshman that I will always remember — Paz Marquez-Benitez's “Dead Stars;” Lord of the Flies by William Golding; Oedipus Rex; Villa's “Footnote to Youth;” poems by Emily Dickinson; Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

10. Laro sa Baga as serialized in Liwayway magazine.





RayVi Sunico’s list (He did not follow directions ;) )


Sorry, 10 too few :( And i've added to the original list.

Was a Marvel Comics fan too— my letter was published in Submariner # 5 and I got a free signed X-Men comic from Stan Lee.

I might add that many of my favorite grade school books were library books. Have marked all library books with asterisks, although I've since bought copies of some of them.


Grade 7
The Oz series (Baum and then Thompson)* (favorites Rinkitink in Oz, The Emerald City of Oz)
The Hardy Boys series*
Tom Swift series*
Villa's Poems 55
The Spicebox of the Earth by Leonard Cohen (poetry)

High School
Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis*
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Little Prince by Antoine de St Exupery
The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien
A Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Personae (poems) by Ezra Pound*
Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Turning On by Rasa Gustaitis
The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis
Journey to the East by Herman Hesse
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe