Friday, May 1, 2015

May Memories - A Look Back at 80's Teen Series Books

For all you "seasoned" readers out there like me (I'll be 38 in July), I thought I'd do a fun lookback in May on 80's Series books. Maybe in June I'll move on to the 90's!Please comment below and let me know which characters in the series' I'm featuring were your faves and why?!

I even found a website that sells old 80s and 90s books! You may want to check that out!

I want to give a shout out to Cliquey Pizza who provided a lot of these flashbacks for me!

How can I NOT start out with the Babysitters Club? The BSC provided me hours and hours of entertainment as a tween.


The BSC entered my 80's world in 1986 with "Kristy's Great Idea." Ann M Martin wrote the books until 1990 when she handed them over to a ghostwriter.

The Hairpin created a "Where Are They Now" post which is quite humorous.

Kristy was the sporty, outgoing character. Claudia was the artsy Asian one. Mary Anne was quiet and shy while Stacey was popular and blonde. There was a girl everyone could identify with. That's what I liked the best about these books. I also loved the Super Editions and couldn't wait to get my hands on one every time a new one came out!

In 1995, the books became a movie starring Rachel Leigh Cook as Mary Anne and Larissa Oleynik as Dawn Schaffer.


The Sweet Dreams series (known in other connotations) was one of my faves. It was a formulatic romance series in which none of the characters knew one another. There was no interweaving plot - just a bunch of clean, formula romances to read.


The series lasted from 1981 - 1995 with 232 books in all. That's a long run! I still see these from time to time in used book stores.


The Sweet Valley Twins series by Francine Pascal also took up a lot of my pre-teen reading time. Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield couldn't have been more different, which got them into lots of sticky situations. The series lasted from 1986 to 1998. I never did get into the Sweet Valley High books, but I'm sure a lot of readers crossed over.

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